CDMA 2000 1x Comes to India

nilesh writes "Yesterday, Reliance Infocomm launched one of the largest CDMA networks in the world [Google news]. This wireless network will cover 90% of India's population on a backbone of 60,000 kms of optic fibre. They have dreams of providing an Internet-enabled Java-powered CDMA2000 1x phone to almost every Indian citizen for around tariffs as low as 40 paise per minute or 0.8 cents per minute. The Samsung/LG/Kyocera phones will be replete with applications ranging from internet banking to video on demand and online gaming. Now all we need is Quake for Java and we'll have college kids playing deathmatches with each other in classroom at 144kbps. The next game revolution is in sight."

Comments

Possible?

[ancukiewiczd]

"for around tariffs as low as 40 paise per minute or 0.8 cents per minute. " Somehow, I doubt such a plan would succeed. Is such a low tariff even possible, much less for this kind of expensive service?

what the hell is happening in india?

[peripatetic_bum]

I keep hearing and reading stories of Indian taking leap after technological leap (even if its just attempted leaps). First the leaped in the future of programming, then linux (the open source initiative that pretty much may have kicked Microsoft in the balls) and now this network leap.

Has India reached some sort of critical mass that the US hasnt reached? I know they are supposed to be a poor country but hell, it feels like they are just about to leap frog over everyone in the next couplt of months. :)

would like to hear replies and thanks for reading

Good for India...

[Anonymous Coward]

but bad for US and Canada, in the long run. Indian government realised that the only way they can reduce poverty and improve the condition of India's citizes is through technology. Permeating every class in the society with the technology will enable even the poorest people to access the learning materials and colaborate with other people in developing new products and services. Those products and services will in turn be sold and smart people who understand technology, no matter how poor they were, will get a chance to rise above the class to which they belonged and achieve their full potential.

It is really too bad that US and Canada, with their sub-substandard primary and secondary education, and lack of technological vision in governmental leaders, will fall behind in technology and be reduced to the land of financial speculators and marketing people.

Re:Good for India...

[zogger]

yes and no, just saying "technology" will save you is incomplete. The industrialised western wealthy "world" got that way in the 19th and 20th centuries by exploiting almost free oil and water and building stuff using technological advances. Those three things are all needed, leave out any one of those three parts, you'll stay a poor nation. China is advancing technologically as well as india, the difference is they build stuff,not just talk about it or design it or trade it, they MANUFACTURE things by the cubic mile, and realising they will be needing more and more oil have picked the muslim oil producing nations to court and trade with, wheras india will forever be at war with where the oil comes from, hence, they will never achieve first world advanced wealthy status. They might achieve a much larger middle class-maybe- but won't become any sort of world power without cheap energy they own.

I am NOT dissing the Indians, just pointing out basic economies. Oil and water AND adoption of technology makes technologically superior nations, not just schooling. India has about zilch for their own energy sources, and in manufacturing they are way behind. Japan was able to suceed by having all brand new manufacturing facilities built relatively recently after world war 2 and by being extremely protectioinist and taking advantage of oil at 2 to 10$ a barrel during the boom years of the 50s through the 70s, now they are hurting and are floundering in a sea of debt with zero hopes of recovering, although they are still making stuff that is advanced and cool, lack of energy will gradually drop their power and influence once china's oil thirst grows larger and as they complete their vertical manufacturing infrastructure. I would suggest NEVER underestimate how important cheap oil has been, is, and will be in the future. India is in even worse shape. They are enjoying a temporary boom that will fizzle in around ten years or so, IMO, as programming becomes more automatic with better tools and easy for almost anyone to do, while at the same time oil increases in scarcity and price. The oil producers will want durable goods, not programs. China is the big winner this century, because they have the only logical and viable long range wealth creation plan now. You are correct about the decline of the US and Canada, we've been sold out for short term profits by our various current "leaders" in the politics/business cartel, and also by your observation of the delibarate "dumbing down" of the populations here by inferior schooling and over emphasis on trivial matters and wealth re-arranging rather than what we were the worlds best at, which was wealth-creating. We are throwing that away for short term mega profits right now, too bad, too. Canada has a chance because of their oil,gas and water wealth, but it remains to be seen if their socialistic governmental structure is up to the task or not, in my observations the jury is still out on that. If they adopted the past japanese model of protectionism and not just selling off natural resources but USING them instead they could be much wealthier, but looks to me like they got sucked into the same trap the US middle class got sucked into by their "leaders", trading real cheap trinkets for a few years for eventual loss of income.

Metered pricing will keep me away.

[Bug-Y2K]

yawn.

In 1995 I had flat rate, all I could eat, ubiquitous (at least in the cities I lived in/travelled to the most: Seattle, SF, NYC), wireless Internet access.

Since the death of that network (Ricochet) I have used other wireless networks (GSM, CDMA, CDPD, etc.) and what made me quit using them very swiftly was the usage-based pay scheme.

You see the problem is that wireless communications are flaky. I know that about half of my voice calls on wireless devices are lousy and/or dropped... data communications is nowhere near as flexible and tolerant of lousy connections as the human ear is. At least I can kind of guess that my wife wants me to stop ... the .... groc... some... milk ...and... thing... dinner.

But my computer/PDA/smartphone/whatever, when presented with a datastream like that would just give up... and try again, and again, and again... at whatever cents per minute? Fsck that. I hate paying for something on a metered basis that just *doesn't work.*

If they came up with a plan that was unlimited, for say $29.95 a month? (what I was paying for ricochet BTW) Sure, I'd buy it. But metered? Forget it.

Re:CDMA vs 802.11 Hotspots

[Kunta Kinte]

The ILECs and other broadband carriers have nothing to fear from CDMA and should begin to embrace working together with them.

They have a lot to fear.

I know a few friends who don't have home phone lines. A decade ago that would have been almost impossible to do. The number of people who've done this is small, but growing.

Next month, I plan to cut my home phone line. I can't wait to say good riddance to Bellsouth.

Currently an alternative for DSL is cable. But even the cable companies should fear cell service providers as well.

Just recently Sprint came up with $40 always on internet ( not including minutes, I assume ). Service is bad, sure, the phone choice is limited, definately, the speeds are slow. But it's only a start and I'm sure the rest of the industry will catch up, and service will improve.

You have to understand most people don't *need* broadband, and can get by very well on dialup speeds. Myself included. GSM/GPRS, bluetooth, a phone plan that allows me enough data to surf the web on average of 1/2hr per day, is all I need. And I think that would suit many other people just fine as well.

Look to Japan for example. I've heard it's more of the norm to not have a landline in younger demographics ( can't verify that ).

Eventually, the local phone companies are going to realize all that money they spent trying to keep their monopoly was wasted. As wireless is going to do them in anyway.

Re:WiLL is not mobile

[Quixote]

The fact is, most people there require just regular phone service, not even cellular. Seeing how densely populated cities are, it would be impossible to lay the copper to connect everyone. WiLL is a godsend. People don't travel much (there) on a daily basis anyways (except, maybe in the 4 large metros). For them, WiLL is as good as cellular.

Just read today that Telstra is also going in for WiLL, and is looking at what the Indians are doing as an example.

Re:waste of money?

[leandrod]

> NOT to use GSM as the initial cost is high

Perhaps I am missing something...

How the open standard, high-volume GSM is more expensive than the proprietary, royalty-ridden, lower-volume CDMA?

In Brasil people are complaining every day that government has chosen TDMA and CDMA over the cheaper, standard GSM.

And with GPRS, GSM get the same data transfer speeds as CDMA.

Ok.. I give.. WTF does TV have to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

' i mean, most of them don't even have a television set probably '

Given that I've not watched 'TV' in 7 years
and haven't died yet. Umm...

Maybe if you spent a little more time reading
and a little less time vegging you'd see that
India is slated for some wicked cool stuff in the
near future.

Hell.. if I spoke the language I'd move there right
now, just for the opportunities. (besides a huge
population of folks that don't have any desire
to pester me with questions about what I watched
on tv the night before.)

Turn it off and get a life.

The wheel comes full circle??

[shamir_k]

About India :
India - population 1,000,000,000 , 60 % rural
Middle class - 300,000,000 (mostly in the cities)
Average cell-phone acquistion cost Rs. 4500 ( $90)
Average cell-phone charges Rs. 2 per minute ( $0.04)

Reliance :
Allocated Rs. 200,000,000,000 ($ 4.5 billion) at the end of 2000 to lay optic fibre throughout the country within 2 years.
They are the largest busines group in India and hav revenues in excess Rs. 60,000,000,000 ($ 1.5 Billion) from their existing petrochemical industries. And a fortune 500 company.

The plan is simple, invest huge amounts of money (which nobody else can) to rollout a wireless network across 600 cities (in Phase I!!). reduce charges to the point where nobody else can compete, and provide cutting edge technology. Subsidise handset costs to persuade users to agree to long-term plans. Provide dirt-cheap call rates (even in Indian rupees) so that usage is high. Watch the revenues roll in from a tech-savvy and tech-starved country.

I can testify that there is a lot of excitement in India over this launch. Many, many people are already planning to switch from their existing GSM services. Remember, this launch is aimed at the 300 million middle class, who can well afford this. They are alos planning to introduce video conferencing and other 3G technologies within a year! Large parts of India may get 3G before the US!!

Seems that the world is leaving the US behind in adopting wireless tech. The best part is that the Java services on these CDMA phones is being set-up by a US company (which I will not name), which is starting a development center in India for that purpose. The wheel coming full circle ??? :))

Should I also mention that I submitted this last week?

Remember, every 6th person is an Indian.