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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?"
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.
It's not unusual for Americans to have a flawed view of what happens in Europe (the reverse is also true). GSM is not a government mandated standard. It was developed by a consortium of commercial companies.
As to subsidies, the Dutch KPN company had to pay the state hundreds of millions of dollars for a G3 license. In Germany they paid billions for the same license. Strange way to subsidize a company, don't you think?
As a result many telecom companies are currently in trouble because G3 services (and customers) have so far failed to materialize. The reason is probably that GSM and GPRS (aka G2.5) are 'good enough' for the moment.
I don't think GSM would have been as competitive if it had been pampered.
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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?
That CDMA isn't used boils down to common sense. GSM is used everywhere with few exceptions (even the US has GSM) so that is the baseline. It would be just stupid to choose some other standard and miss out on those lucrative roaming charges not to mention pissing off your customers at the same time.
Yeah, the median income might be low, but there are still millions of people who can afford cellphones.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
When mobile phones came that cosy, outdated, calcified environment was shattered by new entrants:
The outcome of all this is that in Europe today still, landline telephony is crap (pay-per-minute charges, basic service) while mobile telephone is incredibly successful.
Still, since mobile telephony prices are constantly droping (thus becoming more competitive against landline), the old public telephone companies have mostly been privatised and the lanline telephony market has been liberalized, things are (slowly) improving for landline also.
Care to back that up? Where is CDMA better than GSM?
I had a Nextel, a TDMA phone with Rogers and GSM (in Europe and in Canada) and I take the GSM any day.
SonyEricsson T68i and my iBook and thanks to GPRS I get my email anywhere.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
This is either quite perceptive of you, or the story author doesn't know what cellular networks in poor countries (including many countries in Africa, such as South Africa, where I live), are like. A pay-as-you-go package from Vodacom, Cell-C or MTN will cost you very little, basically, a year of incoming phone calls will cost you R120 ($12), that is unlimited incoming calls, for a year. A R110 package ($11) will give you 110 minutes of outgoing airtime, plus an additional month of incoming calls.
It's not uncommon to see even some of the poorest of people in South Africa having cellular phones. I can't really understand the US stance on cellular phones and wireless technologies, here, at least, they are a great alternative to land-lines. I've seen rural villages and townships being connected to the outside world via cellular phones and wireless radio links, where it would otherwise be very difficult to install land-lines and have conventional internet access. I realize that the USA is a far richer country than South Africa and thus doesn't need measures like this for basic communication, but not having easier access, or in some cases even the option of GSM is a clear case of US corporations screwing the general population, as usual.
We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office. - Aesop