Mobile buzz: It gets louder in the rural areas

Far from being considered as a social obligation, offering telecom services in rural areas has now become the hot spot for private telecom operators.
Nearly 75 per cent of the mobile users in the villages are now owned by private operators as cellular phones catch the imagination of rural consumers. Until now, state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd was known to be the only significant rural telecom operator in the country.
According to numbers compiled by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, nearly 21 per cent of the mobile user base now reside in the villages of India, where a few years ago none of the operators wanted to venture. As on September 2007, out of the 209 million mobile users in the entire country, 43 million were in rural areas.
Rural mobile user base is more than the number of total fixed line telephone subscribers in the country, which has dwindled down to around 35 million.
Bharti Airtel, which had 48 million mobile users in September 2007, had 9.80 million subscribers coming from rural areas. Nearly 27 per cent of Vodafone Essar’s subscriber base is from the hinterlands.
Analysts said that the share of rural telecom consumers will continue to increase as operators have initiated an aggressive roll-out plan to cover remote areas of the country. This is primarily driven by a slump in the growth rate of mobile user base in the metro and urban areas.
According to the data released by the Cellular Operators Association of India Circle C and Circle B States such as Bihar, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab are showing better growth rates compared to the metros. Therefore, most of the mobile operators are investing heavily in setting up infrastructure in these circles.
Market watchers also pointed out that with as many as five new operators planning a pan- Indian network, they will be banking on the unconnected villages to get them afoot into the market. The Government has set a target of 500 million telephone users by 2010, of which about 200 million is expected to come from the rural areas.
The telecom regulator has suggested a number of initiatives to make mobile connection attractive, including lower entry cost to make it more affordable. The casualty, however, has been the fixed line telephones. Despite various subsidies from the Universal Services Obligation fund, the number of fixed line telephone users in villages are decreasing as consumers are increasingly preferring to go wireless. (Copyright-Business Line)

Midsummer Night's Dream

It is truly one of the best plays that I have seen. The Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Tim Supple and performed at Delhi's Kamani Auditorium certainly gave theatre-starved Delhites like me a insight into what a good play is all about. More than anything what really amazed me was how Supple used the cramped space in Kamani to weave out a visual bonanza-a dream (except that the cold January night made it a winter night's dream). There were about 15 characters and the plot is spread over 2-3 different locations. But the small stage at Kamani, which is a laugh compared to the theatre houses in other parts of the world, was enough for Supple and his team to take the audience into a breathtaking performance full with wit, seduction and some fantastic music. It was also wonderful to see how various languages were weaved into the script in such a way that even those who did not understand Malayalam, Bengali or Tamil got to enjoy the essence of the play.

So what am I doing writing about a play on a blog that primarily is based on telecom issues? Well this is the etc part of the blog. Watching the two and half hour play I couldn't stop myself from thinking as to how much better the telecom sector could do if it had a good director. Someone who knows how best to use scarce resources like spectrum and at the same time bring out the best performance from each operator. Instead, what we have is a sector that promises to be the best in the world- but sadly no one knows the script or their role. Therefore most of the drama is now off stage in the courts. Wish we had a Tim Supple directing the telecom sector.

Well that could be just a dream of a self proclaimed telecom expert. But one thing for sure is that had it not been for the legal tangles in telecom (blame it on all the poor direction over the past 6 months), which in effect has stopped the news flow in an otherwise active sector, I certainly would not have been able to get out of office in time to catch the Midsummer Night's Dream on a weekday.

Is it really a growth story?

Everyone says India is the hottest telecom market in the world. I think it should be termed only as the hottest GSM mobile market in the world. Check these facts out- Fixed line telephone subscriber numbers have been dwindling over the last few years with only 35 million left. Broadband growth is slow with just 3 million users, dial up Internet subscriber numbers are falling, paging has been wiped out totally, VSAT is stagnating and there are no takers for CDMA mobile as most operators are migrating to GSM. There has also been no big ticket investment in the manufacturing side this year.

At the rate at which people are surrendering their fixed line phones, I wouldn't be surprised that there would be none left in another 5-10 years. Of course one can argue that fixed line is a loosing business globally but when one looks at the the number of fixed line phones in large markets like USA and China, India is way behind and falling. Even if you take the broadband segment the growth has been very sluggish. After 2 years since broadband was launched in the country there are only 3 million subscribers. Shanghai alone has more broadband users than that. While the Government had set a target of 9 million users by 2007-much needs to be done in terms of policy making in giving a fillip to this entire sector. Well yes we are adding 8 million new telephone subscribers every month thanks to growth in the mobile segment but is that enough to term the entire telecom sector as a growth story?

Designer towers

Mobile towers may no longer be eyesores built as tubular steel structures sticking out from rooftops. Cellular towers, on which the operators mount the equipment for providing coverage in an area, are set to look stylish, aesthetically pleasing and colourful.
Swedish telecom gear manufacturer Ericsson has developed a ‘Tower Tube’ that has been designed in such a way that operators or tower companies can install it in textures suitable to the surrounding landscape.
The Tower Tube, which has been launched in Europe, will be introduced in India once the company gets the necessary certification from the Government. Cost benefits
The Tower Tube claims to provide operators with significant cost benefits. For example, the modular concrete construction allows rapid and cost-effective deployment. It also reduces the need for cooling, thereby boosting energy efficiency and simultaneously reducing operator running costs. The concrete shell also protects equipment from vandalism and lightning strikes.
The Tower Tube replaces conventional telecommunication sites with a sleek, architecturally designed, aesthetically pleasing tower. It can be regarded as a feature of any landscape. It employs modular concrete construction that allows the structure to be deployed quickly and easily. The tower can be erected in a variety of heights, shapes and styles. The exterior’s colour, pattern and finish can also be adapted to help it fit into rural or urban settings. The tower houses all equipment within its slim design (about 5m in diameter), reducing the need for more land. According to one estimate, this has led to a 30 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions associated with construction, and a 40 per cent reduction in energy consumption.
The tower tube is part of Ericsson’s efforts to develop energy-efficient and environment-friendly telecom equipment. (Copyright-Business Line)

Reliance's Huawei card

Reliance is known to play the game well. Its decision to give part of the 100 million line GSM project to Chinese manufacturer Huawei is a smart move considering that global majors like Ericsson and Nokia Siemens (the two controlled 100 per cent share of the Indian GSM equipment market until now) will be under pressure to match the benchmarks set by the $500 million deal. As it is both Ericsson and NS have walked away from parts of a medium sized contract offered by BSNL due to the low price points. Now with Reliance choosing to go with Huawei for the initial supply of GSM equipment, would the two global giants let the larger part of the RCOM contract go out of their hands? For Huawei, this is the first major GSM contract in the fastest growing cellular market. The Chinese have probably arrived.

Meanwhile it is really interesting to see how a completely fixed line operator has managed to become a full fledged GSM mobile operator- in true Reliance style. The latest round of battle between RCOM and existing GSM operators is similar to the fight between the two sides when Reliance wanted to get into the mobility space using the CDMA technology. In both instances- policy was tweaked to accommodate RCOM, in both battles there was a huge drama played out in the courts and in both cases it was RCOM which finally got what it wanted. However in the market, despite fears among existing GSM players like Bharti Airtel that Reliance's CDMA plans would bulldoze everyone else out, after more than 5 years-Airtel has won that battle. It remains to be seen whether RCOM's latest move to get into Bharti's own backyard with a GSM network would change that status. That's good news for telecom consumers like myself as the two giants fight it out in the market I am sure there will be more tariff cuts in the offing.

Here I am...

After much persuasion from my friends I have decided to finally join the blogger community. After spending 8 years living and writing about the telecoms sector in India I am starting this blog to capture, as I see- this wonderful growth story unfolding right in front of us. If the green revolution put India on the global map of self sufficient countries, the telecoms revolution is set to catapult us right up as a global economic powerhouse. With this blog I hope to bring a ringside view of the latest in telecommunications and technology, as it happens.