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Delays and Problems for India's New CDMA Network
securitas writes "The NY Times and Bloomberg are reporting that Qualcomm is touting an expected 6 million Indian subscribers using CDMA by year end. But the facts seem to fly in the face of that with Reliance experiencing technical problems and delays with the launch of India's first CDMA network, covered on Slashdot late last year. Part of the problem is that the GSM operators won't allow Reliance's traffic on their networks, not to mention a court challenge and no approval by regulators. Is this just a hopeful diversion from the loss of the Iraq contract, where MCI chose GSM? How does a country where the per capita annual income is $390-$420 (depending on whose number you use) expect people other than the elite to afford mobile phone service, even if the handsets and service charges are heavily subsidized? Forbes discussed the problem of affordable mobile phone service in Africa where incomes are similar. Is this another wireless/fibre optic bubble akin to the one we saw a few years ago?"
Could you provide a couple of links to back that one up?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I don't know how they do it but I've been to many poor countries where lots of people seemed to be using cell phones. Maybe it's because the GSM market is very competitive that the services can be so cheap.
In Europe it is rare for a 14 year old kid not to have a GSM. I understand that the situation in the US is quite different.
BTW: the Forbes article that is linked doesn't even contain teh word 'phone'!
In australia G3 phones with graphical full colour web surfing, video conferencing and PDA features are being rolled out. Why go with plain vanilla CDMA?
Why not fly if you're having trouble walking? It uses different muscles.
A positive outcome from the war with Iraq. Mohammed Said Sahaf got a job in the Qualcomm PR department
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The numbers mean nothing. The numbers that "estimates" the amount of users for ANYTHING (Internet, AOL, etc) has always been and always will be Bull Shiat
Go figure.
Is a phone that cares not a fig for this CDMA/GSM question.
How impossible can it be to engineer such a Philospher's Phone that will turn these leaden gadgets to gold?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Well the US happens to be the exception in the mobile phone market. You have to PAY to accept calls that people are making to you. Ridiculous. The European market would never accept that, the only time they pay to be called is when they're roaming.
Now, in Tunisia a group did a study for mobile phones, used the same logic, and now the country is lumbering with way below needed capacity of GSM service, and over 6 months waiting lists for activation, last time I checked. Mobile phones become a real status symbol in the developing world, and also allow someone (with prepaid schemes, especially) to be contacted from outside their country by relatives in the diaspora. This is why mobiles are popular. The market is much more open if you have the caller pick up the tab for calling the phone.
You guys in the US should revolt. It is disgusting that both caller and receiver should have to pay for a conversation.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
It's a country with a population of over one billion people. If just one percent are well to do then there are more people in India that can afford a mobile phone than countries like UK, France and Germany, at five percent then there are more than the whole of the EU or the USA.
Then there is the fact that there are millions of early GSM phones floating around Europe that are virtually worthless here. Who wants to but say a Nokia 5110 today? Clean them up slap new covers on, a new battery and ship them out to places like India.
Finally you forget that laying masses of copper wires to every house is a very expensive operation. With a lack of existing infrastructure it may well be cheaper to stick up mobile masts than putting down a copper pair to every house in down town Delhi, or Bombay.
is because nobody wants to have anything to do with Qualcomm ;-)
that a company named "Reliance" is experiencing so much problems.
OTOH - I believe that China has about the same per-capital annual income, and a LOT of people are totting around cellphones.
I know this because in china the manners are a lot worse than the US (despite how low-life you think the "non-silent-ringer" people are, I'll just say "you havn't been to china yet.")
But, well, at least it gives a good grasp of market penetration. despite how annoying it is.
ahem - back on subject - so, anyway, I don't think the annual income will be a problem, but I personally thinks that a SUBSIDIZED PHONE would be. I think if you don't subsidize the phone, then people will buy one and hold onto it (as an asset), because they can afford the lower monthly and don't have to cancel if something bad happens. It seems that this is what most chinese cell-phone holders do - they get a phone for a mass amount, hold onto it for like 5 years (plans to, anyhow), and SMS like crazy because it's cheaper than actually calling.
Yes you do lower the "entrance barrier" if you subsidize the phones, but when people look at the inflated monthly price, much fewer would consider getting one in the first place, despite how convinience it is.
(short side note - subsidizing phone is NOT the same as an individual saving up money for a few monthes and buy a non-subsidized phone because in the non-subbed senario, the monthly rate is lower so if you hold onto the old phone you will be spending a lot less money in the long run whereas in the subbed senario, holding onto a old phone only means you are increasing the phone companies' profits) anyhow, not necessarily good for the phone manufactures, but we are talking about the cellphone company so...
okay, end rant.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Many Indians - so I am told by my oft-resident expert - use mobile 'phones because it is reasonable to expect them to work, which is more than can usually be said for the landlines.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
West-coast rox0rs, east-coast is teh suxx. California love. ....I think I got sunburn today. Sun sux0rs.
Reliance isn't having problems with its technology, it is having political, business and regulatory problems with the rollout of their service. The incumbent service providers are trying to use all means at their disposal to prevent Reliance from gaining a foothold in the mobile communications market. Telecommunications companies are typically run by lawyers and accountants, not engineers.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Click here for the link you can visit without registering at NYTimes (Thanks to Google)
- You set up a home/factory/school someplace where you can't get a landline. More often that not that's just temporary.
- It's more cost effective for your particular use.
I haven't seen or heard of anyone who uses mobile phones because the landlines are unreliable. Might be a rare few, but they are probably an anomaly.I can see that in certain places, that are hard to get wired by conventional methods (POTS), it might be useful to have mobile telephones (that screams satellite), but since when is mobile telephony an essential service, like, say, running water? (which is the way the article makes it sound)
I hate telephones of any kind. It's an intrusive device. It's push content. I hate push content. That's why I hate instant messaging, too. I am a pull-content person, that's why I love email. If *I* want, I can turn email into a push content system again. But I can decide who gets pushed and I decide how. Mobile telephones are the worst. It's not only that annoying thing that rings at inconvinient moments, but it's that's annoying thing that people (not even you!) carry around and rings at inconvinient moments. I hate it when I'm having lunch with someone and the fscking thing rings _and_ the person gets it. I hate it even more when someone comes to my office, interrupts me and suddenly that rings goes off _and_ they get it. You have not only interrupted me while I was doing my work, but now I have to wait for *you* to be done with whatever it is you are doing and do nothing in the meantime because I don't know how long you are going to take. The worst is people driving and taking calls: you are not only putting your life in danger, you are putting others on the street in danger, too. And why? Because you egocentric maniac deem yourself too important and you have to feed your monster ego by carrying something that keeps the world in touch with you.
Yes, mobile phones can save lifes. They have. One day such a thing can save my own life, too. So what? It's not like not having them prevented people 25 years ago from carrying on with their normal lifes, is it?
A friend who used to work in Pakistan told me that they had continual problems with some of the more industrious local residents "recycling" sections of their land-based cable links. Every time a link went down, they would send out a truck to check for missing cable segments.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The official per capita income is 380-420, do you know the number of people who dont report their income?
Anyway around here, every cabbie, peon and roadside hawker has a cell phone.
Most of the world uses a caller-pays-per-minute model for billing phone service. The downside of this is that the caller never knows how much he's going to be paying if he calls a mobile number (or a number routed through a high-charging national phone monopoly).
In the US, the most common model for local calls is a flat rate for unlimited minutes. The companies here tried the per-minute model, and found that customers prefer a constant monthly bill where they don't have to worry about how long they're on the phone. With this model, you can't tack on an extra surcharge for calling a mobile phone. So the mobile phone owner has to pay for it.
Note that China is one of the countries that isn't saddled with legacy copper in the ground, like the US.
As little as 10 years ago, it was common to see wires stringing down from apartment buildings like spider web....if they needed to add a phone line, they just tossed a spool out the window.
China does have a significant number of cellphone users, just in the last 2 ~ 3 years. Again, they aren't held back by corporations trying to squeeze money out of hard investments. They can move right to things like cellphones and wireless computing....other issues aside.
India's biggest issues are mostly political. I don't hold much hope for India getting a fair shake from any corporations looking to do cellphone service there.
The Forbes article is about beaming media to isolated villages. And it's only one person's attempt.
Do we know anything about the guys business model? How did the poster immediately conclude income was the problem when we know nothing else of the scenario.
Satellite data service companies are failing here in the US. Is it because people can't afford it?
How does a country where the per capita annual income is $390-$420 (depending on whose number you use) expect people other than the elite to afford mobile phone service, even if the handsets and service charges are heavily subsidized?
Sigh, we've gone over this so many times...
Micro-payments for hardware. Community equipment. Phones from cheaper sources.
The poor don't have to have the latest nokias. Basic, knockoff cell phones are dirt cheap. Plus families can have one phone for the entire family unit. That's the cost of one knock-off cell phone shared between , lets say, 5 or so adults. And that phone would be expected to last a while.
Cell service would also be a lot cheaper. The newtork is subsidized. Labour, a large part of the phone company's expense, and hence their bill is priced at a rate their economy can bear, I'm assuming most of the labour will be done by nationals.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
May American companies like Quallcom rule the earth!
Join us in the mass praying for American standards. If everybody here join praying, maybe NTSC will make inroads in Europe soon. God bless America.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
With the help of Lucent and Ericsson as per this article
Rapid Nirvana
There are lots of people in India who can afford cell phone service if they choose(approx. 100 - 150 million), in addition the concept of payphones has taken off hugely. They're called STD's and the mobile version of one would do wonders for the ability of remote villages to communicate.
are spreading FUD!
YIAARI (Yes I am a resident Indian) and from what I see, CDMA networks are doing just fine!
Reliance has sorted out all the interconnect issues and everything is going on smoothly since May 1, 2003. There are more than a dozen players in mobile phones (GSM, 3G GPRS, CDMA 2000 1x WLL) so it is natural that this thing took time... two months more than they had projected.
In this cut-throat market, which is growing at >98% per annum, it is natural that one player will make things hard for other, especially if the other player is offering long distance calls at less than 1 US cent per minute (within their nation wide network and other WLL networks). If anybody thinks that it mean demise of Indian cellular market he must be smoking something damn hallucinating.
As for the per capita income bullshit, yes the PCI is low, but you are using the wrong standard. In the US, the median and average incomes are pretty close, so companies usually interchange them for their analysis... a grave mistake if they do so for countries like India and China where median and average incomes are damn far away. Apart from that Indian consumer is very selective in things he purchases... given value for money, he won't hesitate in buying and with current trands in economy where our forex reserves are on all time high and IT sector is doing quite well, people do have money to spend on credit cards, mobile phones and other luxuries. Yes, salaries are around 5-6 times lower, but you got to understand that living expenses are lower by 6-7 times (my monthly food bill is around $60-$100 and I eat pretty lavishly).
In short, this news is OLD and full of BS. Anyone who's thinking CDMA in India is sinking is on crack... and FYI Reliance is a 1000 KG gorilla and one of the biggest company over here... they have already laid over 3000 km of fiber all over country for CDMA and data connections (yes they work... equivalent to dual ISDN) and is doubling that figure in next 6-12 months... and they pretty damn know what they're doing.
- mritunjai
*waves hand in air*
Just invade India and put Rep. Darrell Issa on it and India'll be CDMAed in no time.
For those unaware, Issa is trying to force CDMA into Iraq by passing a bill in Congress, despite the fact that the rest of the Middle East uses GSM.
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Wait until you're going bald. Then you'll really be in trouble.
Reliance is not India's first CDMA network. Others have already deployed networks that are showing signs of growth; in places like Chandigarh, for instance, the number of mobiles have outstripped the number of landlines for the first time in India. Reliance Infocomm's troubles are only partly because of regulatory concerns; the other more significant problem is that its distribution network for the phones is showing signs of failure.
Not that the telecom regulatory rules are okay, (here's a very interesting and candid interview with the telecom minister on the tussle and other aspects of reform), but let's not write off Reliance that easily. They are one of the largest Indian companies around and have succeeded even during the (socialist, insulatory) Licence Raj period in the petrochemicals industry, traditionally considered closed to private sector participation.
They've had some massive lobbying effort in Indian political circles; Roads and Buildings Dept employees often complain how they get calls from their political masters in the middle of the night because they threatened to go against Reliance Infocomm's country-wide road-digging and laying of optical fibre network (a process which, while admittedly professional and impressive, apparently bends a few rules here and there).
Let's face it:- these people are powerful enough to make rules for themselves. They won't give up so much investment without a fight.
More than mere navel gazing.
As another poster already pointed out, 1% of a billion is a lot more than the cell phone users in a more developed country. But there are other factors as well.. Per capita incomes report the average income of a person in the country. In India, as in the majority, if not all countries, there is a huge disparity between rich and poor. Therefore, you have many millions living below or on the poverty line while there are quite a few who can definitely afford a cell phone
In my country, situated close to India, and with similar economic conditions, the landlines are owned by a monopoly (yes, a foreign company has a stake in it as does the government, but its still a monopoly).. Price gouging is common, in fact, no one even bothers commenting and we're light years behind in infrastructure, pricing as a result.. (It can set you back more than half your monthly wages to stay online, for example).. However, from its inception, mobile phone companies were allowed, no, encouraged, to compete, and as a result, the consumer has benefited tremendously. Prices for call charges are dropping, and with a recently ratified agreement, incoming calls may become totally free.. So, small wonder that more people are opting for mobile phones as opposed to landlines for their communications..
Add to that the fact that while people are limited (or see no use for) more than 1 landline or two at the most, it is hardly uncommon for families to have 2-3 cellphones.. Any benefit that mobile telephony can offer that would force the fixed line operators to sit up and take notice, IMHO, is something that a lot of people would root for..
CDMA service has started in India just a few months back. If anything, people are not yet ready to switch to CDMA (Reliance or Tata Indicom) simply because it is not a well-established technology, even though it is quite cheap (40p - 100p per minute depending on various factors).
For GSM service, the whole country is divided into "Cellular Circles", and operators need a license PER CIRCLE to operate there. However, with CDMA, there is no such zoning, as CDMA operators are not (yet) allowed the full privilege of supporting Roaming and other facilites enjoyed by regular cellular operators.
GSM has been around in India for close to 8 years (well established? I would think so). CDMA has just about started. So *OF COURSE* people are reluctant to go in for CDMA mobile phones.
As the YIAARI above mentioned, the interconnect deals have been fixed as of 1st may, so there are no more fights (so to speak) amongst cell operators, just price wars.
And one *very good* thing we learnt and implemented early on was to have different codes for cellphones as opposed to land lines. Now actually we have multiple categories --
* All 98aa xxxxxx numbers are cell phones, with the 'aa' being the Area code (so for example 9811 xxxxxx is Delhi, while 9822 xxxxxx is Pune).
* All BSNL (www.bsnl.co.in) cellphones are 94aa xxxxxx
* All reliance phones are 3
* All Tata-Indicom numbers are 5
* All BSNL Landlines are [2] depending on the city of operation.
Makes life very simple for everyone, as they instantly know what number they are calling.
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
Depends. In my hometown Hyderabad, landlines delivered by the private Tata Indicom are usually more reliable than their GSM (or CDMA) counterparts.
I won't say the same thing for the rural areas though; on a recent visit, I went to a village that's about 200 or so kilometres away from the nearest town and was surprised that my mobile worked. The landlines, on other hand, are often difficult to maintain; the telephone exchange is about 50 kilometres away, and the repairman comes every week.
The point I'm trying to make:- the Indian telecom market is now extremely fragmented. Some states have world-class telephone infrastructure, while others are still in the Dark Ages.
More than mere navel gazing.
1 word -Mastibation-
I am a subscriber of Reliance phone and my expierience in one word is confusion . I am yet to receive my first bill and have no idea how much it is going to be. I had a BSNL mobile and has not decided to ditch it yet. I have also not given my Relience number to any one. All incoming calls are to my GSM mobile, which incidently is also free.
:)
:(
Regarding interconnectivity, I did not had any problem calling any one after they have started billing. The call clarity is excellent. I have no problems with the range also. I recently had a trip to Goa via road. (Trivandrum -> Mangalore -> Goa -> Bangalore -> Madurai -> Trivandrum) and except in forests and other deserted places Relience has range, But BSNL was even better, and I would say Relience is a close second.
The Video and Audio are working as advertised. I have a low end monochrome phone so cannot comment on the quality, but I guess it should be ok. They have a menu option called R-World and it has video audio and lots of other services.
They also have a dialup internet service where phone is connected to computer via usb cable and connects to net at 115,200 bps. The cable costs around Rs. 2000. In the demo I saw they used a dialer in XP and connects to an unknown number. The sales guy put his own number in the phone no field. Other than that it is all standard. (TCP/IP and PAP) I am hoping to get it working on Linux once I get hold of it. And things gets even better when I get a Sharp Zaurus and I am online any where in India
They do not have roming. They have some thing called TSS (Temp subscription service) Where I have t o dial *444 (etc...) from a new location and I get a new number. It is also told that i will be reachable in my old number also. But have not tested this. The customer call center is help full and reachable.
raj
PS: did not check for spellings, pl overlook the errors
Sarovar.org Hosting for open source projects in Indi
Oh, I get it...
You're being clever and demonstrating one of the "problems" that could arise in a cell network: choppy, confusing, garbled words that only barely resemble any modern language.
Now let's see if I can interpret your message correctly:
West-coast rox0rs,
Hmmm... West coast of India... That must be the India/Pakistan border! "rox0rs" must refer to a mountain or other large rock formation...
east-coast is teh suxx
I'm stumped here. I'm going to assume though that "east-coast" refers to India's eastern portion on the Indian Ocean, but you most likely thought that India borders the Pacific, so we'll take that into account. But then you say that it "is teh suxx". I have no clue what this means, however, I will venture so far as to say it is a negative comment towards afformentioned "east-coast." Thus, you do not think highly of the Pacific Ocean
California love
I'm lost. I give up. In the future, I reccomend you either consult the MLA or take a beginner's English (or any other language for that matter) course at your local community college.
Done.
Yeah, the median income might be low, but there are still millions of people who can afford cellphones.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
... about the mobile regime in India is that contrary to other countries, in India, the mobile wars are overlooked and regulated by TRAI (telecom regulatory authority of India).
TRAI makes sure that operators are competing/fighting on fair grounds and big companies are not wiping out small players by predatory pricing. Thus making it easier for small players to compete big gorillas.
Reliance issue was actually TRAI (and others) kicking it in butt for twisting (if not breaking) rules by allowing transparent roaming in its WLL service. By the set rules, WLL operators are not allowed to provide roaming facilites, but Reliance twisted the rules by providing trasparent and dynamically re-registering clients in the areas they visit and forwarding calls to that number. Thus the user dynamically gets allocated a new number BUT all calls on his original number are automatically forwarded to the new number... thus providing a roaming-kind-of facility. This is not roaming service by the book (the user gets a new number) but in spirit its twisting of rules, and TRAI kicked it in balls for this.
However, while taking decisions TRAI officials (much detested so-called beaureocrats) keep in mind public benefit... this is evident in the final settlement that they allowed Reliance to continue BUT then it has to go by the book that says charges have to be network provider agnostic... ie. calls from all WLL operators will cost the same... so now other WLL operators cal also offer similar pricing.
TRAI makes it a point to review policies often and make corrections. It forces companies to provide cost based tariffs so that big companies can't eat small ones for lunch by offering cheap service for short durations to take out small ones and then increasing prices. This also makes sure that state owned telecom providers don't subsidize their services to attract customers. Thus the state owned providers are competitive and actually make profit rather than losing money.
Right now TRAI is reconsidering the license structure and license pricing... I'm hopeful that once its done it will open doors for more players to enter at cheap costs and those savings in costs will be passed on to customers in a fair way.
- mritunjai
The per capita GDP in India is $520. Measured
in terms of purchasing power parity, it is $2300.
As a thumb rule, roughly 30% of the population is
above the mean.
China is around 50% ahead of India.
Land lines in India are not dysfunctional (unlike
China). They are available and they work. GSM
phones are winning because they are *cheaper*.
(Land lines invovle dealing stinking monopolies).
Mobile phones in India have grown at an average of
85% per year from 1994 onwards. Now that there is
competition between GSM and CDMA, hopefully prices
will drop fruther and generate even faster growth.
Here's the breakup of what I pay for my GSM mobile service each month in India.
Rs 370 (~$8) on a prepaid card.
I get 100 minutes worth of talktime(approx.) with free incoming. The minutes get carried forward each time I renew the card.
And no the carrier is not subsidised by the government.
BTW 65% of the Indian mobile market uses prepaid cards.
The charging scheme in the USA actually predates analog and digital cellular telephones. Back when a mobile telephone was a suitcase sized Motorola FM radio transceiver in the car's trunk, the owner of the mobile telephone paid for the airtime of all calls placed to or from his car. All calls were placed through a mobile operator who was responsible for setting up the calls and filling out a charge slip for each call.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is the second time I've seen the accusation of GSM bribing govt. officials in Brazil. Could you care to provide some reference for this? I live in Brazil, and I only hear about this happening from CDMA supporters overseas.
As for legal action, I can't see this pattern of GSM fighting CDMA here: all telecom companies in Brazil sue their competitors all the time. In fact, the CDMA providers sued the GSM providers first, to prevent them from starting operations.
The same way people in a country with an average income of 36,000 $ can afford to buy BMWs, Mercs and Feraris..Hint: Its average per capita..
Interesting story. My dad is currently in Afghanistan for a project. He was unable to call us through land lines, because the phone network is in such bad shape. But apparently, the cell phones in Kabul still work!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The $390 per capita income thing is a bit misleading. One of the key things about living in foreign countries is that stuff is *cheap*. Labor is cheap, raw materials are cheap, etc. So even though the currency is converted into US dollars, it isn't representative of an equivilent amount by any means. When my dad was in Liberia, he changed $10, bought lunch every day for a week, and still had change left over. Whenever I go to Thailand, I feel really weird tipping the bell-boy a quarter, which is an enitrely reasonable tip there. Because of this discrepency in actual costs, its likely that rolling out these networks costs signficantly less in India than it does here, in terms of labor and materials costs.
PS> This discrepency is also the reason that having to import stuff from other countries is so harmful to the economies of these countries --- the cost of foreign products is very out-of-line with the prices in the local economy.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
We are working on a low cost solution that will bring $350/year persons into the mobile world.
We will start selling the products 2004 Q4 based on our new technology.
$6/month flat rate for almost unlimited usage is our goal. This will fit any low income enviroment and is rugged enough to be used in "soon to be developed" areas.
Luck is opportunity meets preparation, lets get lucky
Qualcomm is touting an expected 6 million Indian subscribers using CDMA by year end...How does a country where the per capita annual income is $390-$420 (depending on whose number you use) expect people other than the elite to afford mobile phone service
In a country where there almost a billion people, those 6 million *are* the elite. It sounds like they're not actually expecting the non-elite to be able to afford it.
lmao u n00b :-)
While the average income in India is quite low, this is due in large part to the disparities in the Indian economy at larget. While you have a family that makes $30 dollars a year, you have folks that make $30,000 a year. The Indian middle class is 50 to 100 million folks out of a population of 1 billion. They have the income and the desire to embrace cellular service.
I just returned from India - on a business trip for my company - of the 200 people at our facility in India, I would estimate that 95% had cellular phones. When I went visiting, I saw people in the middle-class who had cell phones everywhere. Even my driver - who would be considered lower, middle-class, had a cell phone.
Another factor to be considered is the quality - or lack - of landlines in India. It can take 3 or more months to get a phone line installed by the PTT. And just as long to get a service call. And you thought dealing with your cable company was hard? Wait until you hear some of the horrow stories that were shared with me.
Finally, I think GSM has this market locked up. Folks in India go to Europe and the US frequently. They want one phone to meet their needs throughout the world. For them - and me - Triband GSM is the way to go.
Bottom line: beware the averages, they lie! Look at the size of the "middle-class" and the income of this middle-class. These are the folks that will adopt cellular service.
- In many developing countries, the landline network is hopeless: lack of capital to expand it, can't afford to serve rural areas, corrupt government owners don't bother maintaining it, etc. A cell network leapfrogs over these difficulties.
- In some countries, providers find it profitable to sell service without a monthly minimum. That's because they can make big bucks on SMS text messages. But perhaps this falls under "GSM is more competitive". Plus the fact that GSM/SMS does a better job of supporting text messages than CDMA, especially between different providers.
- Even where people can't afford individual cell phones, shared access can be a profitable business.
I have to wonder what they were thinking of, starting a CDMA network in India. Supposedly CDMA squeezes more calls into a given tower than GSM. But does that give any incentive for GSM users to switch?Indeed I think/hope that GSM will eventually take over in the US. Its advantages weren't so obvious when cells were just for voice calls. But now that wireless connectivity is all the rage, the shortcomings of CDMA and TDMA, where you have to stop and establish a connection every time you want to go online, will be unavoidable.
Does anybody realise what a pain this numbering scheme is going to be when Number Portability gets implemented? And be sure despite all of Reliances bribing of the Govt consumers WILL demand Number Portability soon
**Life is too short to be serious**
The reason the CDMA guys are cheaper is because they don't have to pay license fees to the govt. So the first article claims. The second debunks that.
One
Two
One of the factors to note is that the Average inidan GDP is on the increase and with one billion people, even if 20% can afford cell phones that is a huge market. I happen to many people who are ditching land phones and taking cell phones in india. Anish Kadavil.
This was near delta territory. Perhaps that makes a difference (soil or politics).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I don't know when this foolishness of reporting Indian commodity prices in US $s is going to stop. Simply to extract a "Whoooa" from the American reader of the article seems too stupid a reason. The Bloomberg article quotes cell phone prices introduced by Reliance in US dollars(read 2 cents a minute). But one must understand that such a conversion doen't necessarily imply that the new service introduced by Reliance is dirt cheap by Indian standards. Rs2.5/minute still retains its own value in Indian currency. And I see absolutely no point nor the necessity for the author to quote the average Indian salary of less than $1500/year. One should first understand that the currency conversion is a very big factor here(1US$ ~ Rs. 48), but the guy who earns 1500$ in India can live much more well off than the guy who earns $1500 in the US. Reflects how ill-informed authors can be sometimes before they write something sometimes. Unless such things are only meant to be swallowed for the pure shock value of these...
I don't know about other countries, but I do know that in Bangledesh, some years back an economist started the Grameen Bank, a micro-finance bank geared toward the poorest of the poor (landless women, primarily), which has become the model for micro-finance institutions started all over the world. Anyway, several years ago, the Grameen Bank branched out and started offering cell phone service with the model that a person in the village would get a micro-loan to purchase the phone which the person would then use as a small business--everyone in the village would go through that person if they needed to use a phone, paying a fee to use it. The result is that Bangledesh has a pretty decent cell phone infrastructure. My brother was there a couple of months back and said that there are advertisements all over the place for Grameen Phone.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
You set up a home/factory/school someplace where you can't get a landline. More often that not that's just temporary.
I thought there were some parts of India where it can take forever to get a new land line installed? Including some of the major cities.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Hmm...do you reckon maybe somebody whipped out a cell phone infrastructure for those very purposes? It's a hell of a lot easier to do that than worry about landlines.
If you have faith, and ask God in prayer in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, you will have your prayers answered. God has many blessings for you if you only ask Him. You are His son, and He loves you. Here are some helpful links:
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Intercession
- Love
- Overcoming
Anger
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Overcoming
Anxiety, Worry and Tension
- Overcoming
Child Abuse
- Overcoming
A Critical Spirit
- Overcoming
Guilt
- Overcoming
Lust
- Overcoming
Sexual Sins
- Overcoming
Temptation
- Peace
- Praise
- Repentance
Then Jesus told them, "I assure you, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, 'May God lift you up and throw you into the sea,' and it will happen. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer" (Matthew 21:21).The rates for G3 are incredibly high, so much so that they're beyond affordability for many in the US and Europe, let alone India. Someone using a mere 10 MB/month (which is something like 15 mins/day of websurfing) would have a phone bill of over US$200/month. That's ridiculous.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
In the US, the cell phone user has to use up minutes to use the cell phone, whether he or she is making or receiving a call (which involves paying if the pre-paid minutes included in the monthly plan are up). The caller does not pay if it's a local call. At all. Not even a cent.
In Europe, on the other hand, it's disgusting -- if you make a call to a cell phone, you have to pay an exorbitant extra fee over the normal cost to dial a land-line. This is ridiculous -- if the other guy wants a cell phone, let him pay for it. I shouldn't have to pay extra because he chose to use a cell phone instead of a land-line. (The way I get around this at the moment is just to refuse to call people in Europe unless they give me a landline number to call.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The cellular network there is brand new.
Unfortunately, it's not possible to do such a thing, because it's the fine governments of Europe that are extorting the bulk of the money, not my international phone service provider. The governments charge fairly hefty taxes on incoming calls to mobile phones, so I have to pay them regardless of my provider.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It used to take sometimes years to do that, but they have really shaped up over the past few years. Plus you could always pay extra to get, like, next week installation.