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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
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.
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 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.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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
... 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
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.