DoT selectes two US – based companies – Telcordia Technologies and Syniverse Technologies – to provide MNP services in India

Syniverse has been awarded a letter of intent to provide India’s telecommunications operators with number portability clearing house and centralised database solutions for the next 10 years.

The DoT (Department of Telecommunications) has divided the country into two geographic zones for the effective implementation if the MNP (Mobile Number Portability) services.

Each zone is further divided into 11 service areas that represent cities within the zone.

Syniverse will cover northern and western states including Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, while MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions India Pvt Ltd, a joint-venture including Telcordia, will roll out services in the southern and eastern states.

The MNP implementation will be initially focussed on the larger metropolitan service areas before moving into the rural locations, the company said.

(Source: siliconindia)

25mn phones to go out of service

DoT has instructed operators to disconnect all handsets which do not have an IMEI number from January 6th 2009

WiFi and WiMax Penetration in India…

The WiFi market in India is set to roll with real estate developments, growing laptop sales, pervasive use of mobile phones for rich content transfer.

As per a study by Tonse Telecom, 2011-2012, the market for Wi-Fi networking gear and services (excluding laptops, handsets, and chipsets) in India will top $890 million, marking a 36% CAGR from 2008.

WiFi is widely being used in rural areas to connect rural farmers to experts in agriculture, remote patients to doctors, and young villagers to training and employment opportunities.

On the other hand, WiMax is expected to see a slow uptake until 2009 and is expected to rope over 6.9mn WiMax connections by 2011.

By January 2008, India had only 3.4 million broadband subscribers, far short of the target of 9 million by 2007 set by the broadband policy. Given the low levels of PC penetration in India, there will be a limited demand for WiMax and the country-specific mobile broadband framework makes a nationwide rollout of WiMax cost prohibitive.” Gartner principal research

“While the government policy proposes extensive rural coverage using WiMAX, due to the limitations of the spectrum allocation, the only deployment for a sustained business case is to bring WiMAX broadband to rural centers in villages or schools, hospitals and so on. From the access point, individual access will then be available via a Wi-Fi mesh. In urban areas, WiMAX can be utilized to offer mobile and semi-mobile broadband to consumers and enterprise customers.

In November 2007, the Department of Telecom (DoT) decided that it would auction the 3G and WiMAX Spectrum. For 3G, the Indian government allocated 30 MHz of bandwidth in the 2100 MHz band. Therefore, there will be three or six licenses released dependent on the government’s decision on whether 5 MHz or 10 MHz will be given to each license holder. The government also decided to auction three WiMAX licenses in the 2.5 GHz band with 10 MHz each.

The timeline and bandwidth of 3G and WiMAX licenses will heavily impact the future mobile broadband access market share in between 3G and WiMAX. The permission for mobility in the WiMAX license will also influence the future of WiMAX growth. Also, 3G seems to have, in comparison to WiMAX, a better ecosystem in place, according to the report.  ”

The major challenges in WiMax updake is of course the poor broadband penetration in India, unavailability of mobile frequencies and most importantly, govt.’s lack of interest.

India Getting Ready For 3G Wireless Broadband…

Coming soon in India – world’s fastest growing mobile market – 3G services by the dozen. And what that means is a looming free-for-all in a market where competition is already fierce, prices super low, profits even lower and consumer is the ultimate winner.

Indian Department of Telecommunications (DOT) is getting all set to introduce about a dozen 3G licenses in some of the more densely populated regions including the South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai), Karnataka, and Kerala. The information comes to us from our friends at Packetology, a Telecom research firm focused on the Indian market.

Other states getting 3G will include North Indian state of Haryana (right next door to Delhi and home to many outsourcing outfits), while ten licenses will be up for grabs in Kolkata (Calcutta) and Madhya Pradesh. In other large markets such as Mumbai (Bombay) and Delhi, the number of licenses available be far fewer because the available spectrum is in limited quantities. Delhi will have only four licenses while Bombay can accommodate upto eight licenses.

According to initial DOT 3G policy, each carrier was going to get 5 MHz of spectrum and only 25 MHz of total spectrum was available. However, more spectrum has become available, hence the boost in the number of players who can bid for the spectrum.

The availability of such a huge amount of spectrum and licenses makes India one of the few unique places to have aggressive and highly competitive 3G market from get go. Most countries have between 2-to-5 players. UK has five, US has four, Brazil has four and most Asian countries have two or three. With this kind of liberal licensing of spectrum, and the existing 2G operations in place, some regions might get over a dozen operators offering phone services.

Thanks to fierce competition in the 2G services, India continues to be one of the fastest growing mobile markets – about 300 million at last count – mostly because prices are seriously low. Still, the presence of such a high number of players makes you wonder if there will be anyone who will be able to make money. The looming WWF style competition is going to keep large US and European carriers out of the market, though there has been news that AT&T and Verizon are very keen on entering the Indian market.

The new 3G players in India will be looking to build their networks very cheaply in order to compete and offer ultra low prices to end consumers. This would mean despite a huge buildout, companies like Siemens, Nokia, Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent and others should forget about making any real profits. The Chinese vendors – Huawei and ZTE – can mop-up, because they are willing to sell at a loss in their bid to gain market share. Infonetics Research, a Campbell, Calif. – based market research firm recently said that China and India are two major drivers of telecom equipment sales.

So who wins in this? Qualcomm & Nokia! The spread of 3G technologies brings a lot of royalty money into Qualcomm’s coffers. Similarly, Nokia is the strongest mobile brand in India and has a 3G portfolio of phones to match.

The big question that looms large in my mind: by introducing so many players in the market, is DOT killing the golden goose? In other words if there are too many players – dozen odd – and no one is making money, it would (and could) lead to a situation where they start shutting down. It could in the end the competition would decline and might result in an increase in prices.

Vishal