3G technology triggers explosion in India

By Suman Ravikumar, SiliconIndia   |   Monday, 25 October 2010, 20:53 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: As India's mobile service providers evolve from 2G to 3G networks, the nation's rapidly-growing telecom market is witnessing a significant increase in core bandwidth in order to handle data traffic. The transition from 2G to 3G and ultimately 4G has begun; however, more than 80 percent of the world's mobile subscribers still use 2G service. In India, for example, 3G service is not yet available. Therefore, the number of 2G subscribers in India and globally will continue to grow, surpassing four billion worldwide by 2012. India is re-working its spectrum revenue strategy to accommodate the new challenging technology. A mobile operator can upgrade its base stations with the module, but continue to use the network for GSM in the 900MHz band or 1800MHz band, and then add support for HSPA (High speed packet access) or LTE (Long Term Evolution) when the local regulator permits it, according to Andre Mechaly, vice president for wireless networks strategy at Alcatel-Lucent. New 3G systems will trigger an explosion in wireless Internet and data applications by delivering far higher data rates than have ever been possible in wireless systems before. It is estimated that in the next five years 90 percent of all mobile phones will be used for data traffic and only 10 percent for voice calls. Currently, operators are looking for additional spectrum in which they can offer mobile broadband to more users with better coverage and faster speeds. Reframing their existing spectrum holdings to use faster radio technologies will be an important part of that. The pressure is now on regulators to speed up the process. The Government paved the way for deployment of Mobile broadband over 3G and WiMax or LTE. It is now for the operators to build a healthy ecosystem and offer Wireless Internet services. Here is what Industry Analysts expects on the Application of Wireless Broadband in India - Using Mobile / Hand-held Devices / Laptops etc. Mobile banking transactions are expected to be over 340 million in the year 2015 resulting in cost savings of approximately 11 billion. Using Unique ID, a customer who has a mobile phone will be able to open a mobile linked account. Digital music sales are expected to grow at a rate of 24 percent between 2010 and 2013 to reach 3 billion in 2013. Online advertising in India is expected to grow at the rate of 32 percent between 2010 and 2013 to touch Rs 20 billion in 2013. India with a second largest population of 1.1 billion has just 6 percent of Indians connected via the internet. U.S. has a connection speed of 5.1 Mbps while India is still struggling with 256 kbps as broadband. However, more and more operators in India are concentrating on mobile wireless broadband. Nokia Siemens Networks is the first company to successfully demonstrate the Time Division Duplex version of LTE (TD-LTE) using broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in India. The first video call was made by Gurdeep Singh, chief operating officer of Aircel. The call was conducted with the 4G mobile technology running on commercial hardware at the Nokia Siemens Networks' Bengaluru R&D facility. It marks an important milestone moving 2.3 GHz TD-LTE closer to commercial availability. This technology ensures high-speed mobile broadband connectivity and a superior performance from mobile applications across a wide range of devices. Nokia Siemens Networks is at the forefront of TD-LTE development and commercialization, actively working with telecom operators and device manufacturers. The company is fully prepared and committed to support the LTE activities and is in talks with many operators globally. It is actively participating in tests and trials for both Frequency Division Duplex LTE (FD-LTE) and TD-LTE technologies, while working with telecom operators and device manufacturers to strengthen the ecosystem. Earlier this year, Nokia Siemens Networks successfully demonstrated TD-LTE trials during Shanghai World Expo, and TD-LTE data calls at the company's R&D center in Hangzhou (China) and at Taiwan's National Chiao Tung University. Gurdeep Singh Chief Operating Officer of Aircel said "80 percent of the people in India know what internet is but don't know how it works .With the 3G and 4G technology, a digital highway is created and truly will be a wave transformation. The mobile broadband will explore many sectors like mobile health care, broadband education, sports live watch and many other interesting transformations." Other Service providers like BSNL, Tata Docomo and Airtel have come with mobile broadband and offering traffic which are low cost wise and provides best quality of high speed Internet. With the iPhone's and iPads gaining popularity day by day mobile broadband has a very promising market in India. However, there are a few challenges that would hold the operators back from switching off 2G networks: The the 2G users would need to replace their handsets to be able to use the 3G network. The carrier would need to provide handset subsidy to encourage the users to replace their handsets. Moreover, with voice tariffs dipping, roaming revenues are a significant portion of the revenues. In case an operator decides to switch off the 2G networks, the users from other 2G networks will not be able to log on to the operator's network.