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?"

Comments

Excuse me?

[fluxrad]

Could you provide a couple of links to back that one up?

GSM = cheap?

[Xenna]

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'!

Re:GSM = cheap?

[nounderscores]

according to m commerce times the GSM networks have been in europe and asia since the 80s so the tech is more mature. More mature means that mass production drives down the cost.

Re:GSM = cheap?

[Xenna]

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.

X.

Re:GSM = cheap?

[DrXym]

Not just competitive but a mature and proven technology with broad industry support for the standard and numerous heterogenous solutions for customers and networks. Not to mention roaming and SMS.

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.

Re:GSM = cheap?

[Aceticon]

The situation in Europe was that the landline phone companies were usually a state-owned, legal monopoly.

When mobile phones came that cosy, outdated, calcified environment was shattered by new entrants:

• The mobile phone technology offered services that the landline technology couldn't offer (access anywhere, roaming, SMS)
• The slight advantage that the old telephone company had in terms of already having an already in the ground voice network was not enough to provide a barrier to entry for new companies in the mobile telephony area
• The new mobile phone companies started competing amongst temselfs and against the old telephone company. They came up with new ideas (pre-payed telephone cards, ...) and offered more services on mobiles (voicemail, ...) than had ever been available for landline telephones (let's just say that the old monopoly companies never felt the need to invest in services for they're customers)

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.

Re:GSM = cheap?

[dackroyd]

Could be something to do with the fact that they can share the mobile phone.

The Economist has run a couple of stories on how development agencies can give micro-loans (~$100) to poor people in Africa and India, to allow them to buy a phone. That person then charges other people in their village a small fee to use the phone.

Result: massive improvement in quality of life for villagers as they can phone up to get day-to-day market prices to get the best prices for the foor they produce, can get medical assistance over the phone, can organise work etc.

Once a phone is shared between 30 people, the cost for each of them really does come down quite a bit....

Re:GSM = cheap?

[fstanchina]

American products? Such as, say, Microsoft Windows? ;)

Indeed, if we Europeans stopped developing our own technology and relied on US's, it would become truly inexpensive... in the US. Here, I'm not so sure.

GSM is cheap because everyone and his dog has a cellphone here, and that's because it offered cheap rates, useful services and good coverage from the beginning. Add to the mix the "status symbol" value cell phones had in the early days and the teenagers' addiction to SMSing (the best example of an useful service which was perfectly tailored to the market) and you're set for success. I don't know why cell phones are not so widely used in the US: AFAIK it's not for technical reasons because CDMA is widely believed to be technically superior, but we know this means absolutely nothing. Customers want *services*, they don't care about the best radio interface.

And, as someone already told you, GSM is not mandated by anyone except the market and it is not subsidized by anyone except the customers.

And finally, just to add my own piece of biased opinion, I prefer the European governments' socialist bend to the American government's fascist bend.

Re:GSM = cheap?

[mn2346]

You need to think this in a another way. When there is NO landline built then skipping the wires alltogether and moving directly to cellular (standard is not important in this example) will save the telecom componies money AND is faster to build. Think about it, drag a base station in town centre and serve 500 people ~immediately when switched on (or some other figure...) when making the similar landline connection will require 500 housecalls and wires routed to all those houses. What the companies are chanrging is another issue and basically nothing to do with location or borders. When money is tight and I mean really tight, not just unable to go to movies to see Matrix tight. Phone is not a fashion statement but rather something to be valued. Data speeds are terrible but only compared to highspeed connections. If money is NOT an option use other technology...

Re:GSM = cheap?

[MKalus]

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.

Re:GSM = cheap?

[Chainsaw]

I'm not sure what you mean here. Considering that I could use my Ericsson in Sweden, Norway, Finland, USA, the entire god damn Europe and most other parts of the world without a hitch tells me that GSM works just fine. CDMA coverage is... Well... Mostly zero around here. However - both standards work. Doesn't that mean that they both suck, but in different ways?

Re:GSM = cheap?

[nigel.selke]

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.

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.

Why go CDMA when G3 is being rolled out?

[nounderscores]

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.

Yea!!!

[Timesprout]

A positive outcome from the war with Iraq. Mohammed Said Sahaf got a job in the Qualcomm PR department

What the market wants

[smittyoneeach]

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?

Re:What the market wants

[Sigurd_Fafnersbane]

Not impossible but not economical either. It would be a little bit like making a car that will run on diesel as well as gasoline.

Or a CPU that will be both RISC and CISC to site another popular holy war of years past.

A CDMA rf is almost by definition more expensive to build since it is operating in full duplex (Meaning the receiver and the transmitter is active at the same time). If you want to add a TDMA RF in parallel the cost would increase even more. Not was is called for in a cost consious market.

Poor premise about mobile phone

[fruey]

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?

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.

Re:Poor premise about mobile phone

[stoops]

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.

Re:Poor premise about mobile phone

[fruey]

Do your research. I did not say Americans were stupid, and yet you insult Europeans by calling them stupid. I was just urging consumers in the US to look at other economic models...

Anyway, there are unlimited plans for around 50 in most European countries as it happens. There are also unlimited plans for local/national calls and Internet available from around 50 month, including high speed ADSL or Cable connections.

I think the caller picking up the tab to disturb me on my portable phone is more just. I don't like getting disturbed on it anyway.

Just because some things (like free local calls) are taken for granted, doesn't mean that this is really the best economic model for the telcos. Look at Haiti (who continue to have free local calls, because they used the US model as a starting point) - they have enormous problems now because there would be a revolution if the telco starting charging for local calls. But they really do need to charge for local because telephony is a big mess and unsustainable with "free calls" to the Internet and then hackers... etc

Check out the bigger picture before insulting a whole continent. And don't take anything that could be misconstrued as anti-American as being a direct attack, perhaps it is just constructive criticism.

Re:Poor premise about mobile phone

[Woy]

>You guys in the US should revolt. It is disgusting that both caller and receiver should have to pay for a conversation.

And I said the same about europe when someone in the UK told me that connecting to a BBS next door 24/7 would cost them thousands of dollars (remember, this was back in the late 80s / early 90s). I think I'll stick with free local calling at fixed rate prices (which are already far cheaper than your European line lease rates), TYVM.

You guys may not know it but you are talking of the exact same thing. It was the stupidly expensive landlines in europe that drove the mass acceptance of mobile phones and the competition that got us our great prices. Someone also said that they are very happy with flat plans of a fixed 50$ per month. I speak on the phone a LOT and i couldn't possibly concieve how i could spend so much money on my mobile phone. We just don't pay those prices, flat fee or not.

Re:Poor premise about mobile phone

[Malc]

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.

Re:Poor premise about mobile phone

[XSforMe]

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.

Not everyone in India is poor

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not everyone in India is poor

[Dusabre]

One note - mobile penetration in Europe is around 50%. At least 50% of the US population can easily afford a mobile (if Europeans can then Americans can). The UK has 60 million inhabitants, Germany 80, the US 300. 30 million people from the UK + 40 million from Germany and 150 from the US = 220 million > 10 million (1%) or 50 million (5%) of India's population.

Add together Europe's and the US population and you have 600 million rich people.

Many more people can afford phones in Europe and the US than can in India - regardless of India's larger population.

Re:Not everyone in India is poor

[vidarh]

Uhm. One percent of a billion is 10 million. There are way more people than that who have cellphones in the UK alone. Scandinavia, with a population of roughly 25 million has more than 20 million cellphones.

I agree with your point, though, that the country is large enough that a very low cellphone penetration still make up a sizable number, but the EU is close to a population of 400 million, and as far as I know all member states have a cell phone penetration of more than 50%, some well above 80%.

But regarding price, you are right. That is why cell phone penetration is Africa has increased so rapidly. It's massively cheaper to build out a wireless network than a wired network - the only reason we're being charged more for wireless in Europe and the US is that the landline network is already there, and has been written off decades ago.

In Nigeria, on the other hand, where a population of 120 million have been sharing around 500.000 landlines, and installing more lines typically means extending the network, it took only 6 months before more people had cellphones than landlines because it is much easier to get a cellphone than to get a landline installed.

Re:GSM = working

[leonbrooks]

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.

Re:GSM = working

[varun]

As an Indian living in India, it comes as quite a surprise to me that you were told this. AFAIK, the only time mobile phones are used as an alternative is when:

1. You set up a home/factory/school someplace where you can't get a landline. More often that not that's just temporary.
2. 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.

Since when is mobile telephony essential?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Copper

[Detritus]

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.

Re:Copper

[Aceticon]

This is common in many poor countries. Check the price of copper, and check the average salary in some of these countries... For many, "recycling" phone cable is a much better source of income than any legal work they would have a chance of getting.

Which might make fibre cheaper in the long run ...

Per Capita Income

[xzap]

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.

Re:Per Capita Income

[The Cydonian]

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.

Not this again

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Join us

[CausticWindow]

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.

Why Reliance will be a winner:

[romit_icarus]

1. They are big and good in execution. They learn from their mistakes and don't fail. They contribute 5% to India's GDP
2. They're the only ones who have invested (to the order of a few billions) in optical infrastructure
3. They have extended the optical pipe to key office buildings for enterprise involvement They have a large footprint in India - they can therefore provide cheap national rates.
4. CDMA/WLL (wireles in local loop) allows for good data throughput given the existing circumstances
5. Reliance has plans to set up multipurpose set-top boxes that provide a conduit for cable/voice/internet over IP
6. For deep penetration, PCs are too expensive. phones (cost USD 50) is a good substitute (untill a better device comes people's way)
7. Urban India with all its poverty likes mobile devices - there is a 20% penetration in delhi and bombay...

These guys as usual...

[mritunjai]

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.

I know the answer...

[GrodinTierce]

*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.

Repeat after me.

[The Cydonian]

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.

When will they learn

[hashinclude]

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.

Re:GSM = working

[The Cydonian]

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.

From a subscriber's point of view

[raj2569]

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 :(

incomes

[delmoi]

Yeah, the median income might be low, but there are still millions of people who can afford cellphones.

Behind the scene story...

[mritunjai]

... 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.

Clarifications

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Some points

[be-fan]

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.

The elite?

[tuxlove]

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.

The huge Indian middle-class

[jordandeamattson]

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.

Phones in the 3rd World

[fm6]

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.

That's probably a factor. There are others:

• 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.