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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?"
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.
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
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
You guys in the US should revolt. It is disgusting that both caller and receiver should have to pay for a conversation
actually, the caller doesn't even have to pay when calling a cell, as long as its a local call (unless he's calling from a cell himself).
there's a simple reason why only charging the caller in north america won't work: cell phones use the same area codes as land lines. thus, there would be no way for the caller to tell whether he's making a free call to a land line or a paid call to a cell phone. to get around this problem, all cell phones would have to be issued new area codes. and that would be pretty chaotic.
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
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.
*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?
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..
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.
Very good point, only tarnished by the fact that per capita income is apparently calculated by taking an average of the GDP over the population. Actually, I'm not sure of the exact formula [my training is in CS, not Econ ;-) ], but the point is, per capita income probably does not depend on declared incomes.
A better way to explain the discrepancy is by considering regional clusters; states such as Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh have, in the past 10 years, shown a SGDP growth similar to what you would have seen in the so-called "Tiger" economies in South East Asia. (Indeed, Maharashtra was considered a more competitive environment than the whole of India in a recent study; lost the link, sorry about that). While at the same time, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and others house 45% of India's poverty, and contribute the maximum to India's population growth.
That is to say, while you hail cabs in Chennai and Hyderabad by calling them up on the cabbie's mobile phones, you can easily get mugged and kidnapped in Patna, possibly by an elected Member of the Legislative Assembly.
Welcome to 21st century India, we're like this only.
More than mere navel gazing.
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
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.
I think that's it's disgusting that somebody's choice to have a mobile phone should cost other people money. Ridiculous. The North American market would never accept that, the only time time they pay to call is when it's long distance.
Personally I refuse to call people in Europe on their mobile phones. I'm not paying for them to have the convenience of having a mobile phone. It's rude of them to expect me to.
As it turns out, mobile phones don't seem that expensive here in Canada. Most people buy a package of so many minutes per month of free air time. Within that limit, local calls are *free*. Often calls at the weekend or evenings don't even count towards that limit. Going over quota isn't unreasonable either compared with what Europeans pay per call anyway. Long distance and international calls are at the same rate as my landline (currently CAD$0.07/min to UK, or about £0.03). SMS texting is unheard of because it's not needed. Who would want to use that when they can call locally for free? SMS text messages aren't that cheap, but still remain popular in Europe because they're cheaper than voice calls! Ridiculous. Here people pick an airtime package that suits their needs, and the prices seem reasonable.
You guys in Europe should revolt. It's disgusting that caller should pay for the receiver's life style choice.
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...
- 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.
Many people point to the fact that both the caller and the reciever pay for calls in US and say this is bad, while I agree this is not the perfect situation, I don't agree that it is necessarily worse than Europe's aproach. In Europe the caller always pays by the minute even if he is calling the house two doors down. American's would revolt if someone tried to tell them that had to do that.
I have been teaching English now in Poland for the last 8 months 90% of my students between the ages of 11 and 16 have a mobile that they bring to class. (I often find myself taking away a phone for the remainder of class period because they just can't stop playing with them.)
Another difference between phone usage here is that I know almost no one in the US who actually gets excited about SMS. I just don't see why not just call the person and tell them the two sentences it is going to take me twice as long to type, but most Polish people will send 10 SMSes instead of just calling the person and having a 5 minute conversation.
Europeans say they wouldn't put up with having to pay to recieve calls on ther mobiles, but Americans wouldn't put up with having to pay for local phone calls on land lines (which constitute a majority of phone calls anyway).
But there do exist companies like Cricket (though the service is often kind of flaky) that provide mobiles with free incoming calls within calling areas. And the service here is getting better.
The system here in Mexico the system is setup in a PPP-AAA-NNNNNNNNN. In Mexico PPP is either 001 (internationa LD), 01 (national LD), 044 (pay per call to a local phone) or a set of other services. AAA is the local area code and NNNNNNNNN is the local phone number. if you want to dail to a sandard phone, you ommit the PPP-AAA part. I was undert the impresion that the Mexican and American dailing were very similar
Any extra prefixes on the front indicat either a toll call or an international call.
Which is precisley what we are trying to do. A call to pay per call phone is a toll call.
For years there was plenty of equipment out there that couldn't handle the new numbers.
Maybe now with the new equipment this would not be as hard to implement
I am not a telco engineer, I only know that the Mexican system was set up in a very similar way as the American one. The alternative would be to change gazillion of already in use phone numbers. I think it is worth the effort. The rewards are evident. In Mexico there are already more cell phones than land phones.
My other OS is the MCP!