The
focus has shifted from voice to data as far as telecommunications go.
In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of hue and cry in
India about how the successor of 3G services, 4G will dominate the year
2015. With 4G, specifically Long Term Evolution (LTE), one can expect
theoretical data download speeds of up to 40 Mbps on mobile handsets.
This means, watching a live football game on your handset will be
distortion and lag-free. Moreover, blazing speeds will also pave an
efficient way to services including VoIP, streaming video, and video
calls.
The handsets are there…
Undoubtedly,
phone makers seem to be on track and have diverted their attention
towards 4G. Evidently, we can see the commitment towards bringing 4G
devices in India. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen Lenovo A6000,
Oppo R5, Xiaomi Note 4G, Micromax Yu Yureka, and one thing that is
common among them is that they all support 4G. Xiaomi, known for its
flash sales, has opted to team up with Airtel, encouraging users to
shift to 4G. Airtel is ready to offer 4G plans at 3G prices for the
device. Gionee has also announced that starting 2015, all its
smartphones priced above Rs 10,000 will feature LTE.
Most
companies had started testing 4G devices last year, and if the chatter
online is to be believed, then many have started working at bringing
low-cost budget 4G devices to India. Microsoft is ready to launch its
low-cost Lumia 735 LTE handset here while Huawei plans to bring its 4G
devices priced under Rs 10,ooo to India by mid-2015.
…What about the network?
Mediatek,
known to power most budget devices entering Indian market, had also
unveiled its 4G LTE chipset, the MT6595, to take on its rival Qualcomm’s
Snapdragon 800 chipset family. Last year, it hoped to sell around 300
million chips, out of which 30 million would be 4G LTE chips. It expects
the number to increase in 2015 and 2016 with more markets including
India transitioning to 4G LTE technology.
However,
even if companies churn out 4G devices, a dime a dozen, it wouldn’t
really matter unless proper 4G infrastructure and services are in place.
Sure, getting a 4G enabled phone, specially when it is being offered at
affordable rates, is a good way to future-proof your investment. But
barring few lucky cities, 4G is yet to be seen across India.
Surprisingly, even our commercial capital, Mumbai, hasn’t tasted the 4G
experience yet.
Industry speaks
“At
the current bandwidth, users are not able to enjoy uninterrupted video
streaming. We are hoping that 4G will be introduced in the country at
the earliest possible time. Some service providers have already started
gearing up to launch 4G services in the country. This is an exciting
time for smartphone makers like us who are committed to delighting users
with innovative devices. Our smartphones, namely Oppo R5, Oppo Find 7
and Oppo Find 7A are all 4G/LTE compatible devices. We plan to introduce
more 4G enabled devices this year,” said Tom Lu, CEO, Oppo Mobiles
India.
While
everyone was expecting a proper 4G rollout to more cities in India in
late-2014 and a further boost as we entered 2015, it looks like we will
have to wait until mid-2015 to see some real action on a pan-India
level.
“At
the moment, there is still no clarity on when 4G will be rolled out in
the country but given the honourable Prime Minister’s Digital India
dream, both broadband and 4G are likely to be given huge boost this
year. We don’t see a reason to get involved in the 4G space as this
seems well catered for by the incumbent players. However, we plan to
partner with these operators within our Wi-fi strategy to allow data
offload where possible to assist network operators with the huge growth
of data consumption,” said Nigel Eastwood, CEO, New Call Telecom.
Bharti
Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, bought 1800 MHz
spectrum in a number of circles in last year’s February auctions. This
means, they can deploy 4G services using FDD-LTE technology anytime. The
global ecosystem around 4G FDD-LTE is far more developed than the other
LTE technology, TD-LTE. However, only Aircel and Airtel have managed to
launch 4G services in a limited way in select cities.
The roadblocks
As
per auction conditions, the successful bidders are required to provide
90 percent coverage in metro areas, if they have spectrum there, and 50
percent of rural area within five years. If a company fails to meet
roll-out conditions, spectrum will be taken back. However, telecom
industry body COAI had requested the Department of Telecom to extend
deadline for roll out of 4G services to 2020 citing various hurdles,
mainly delay in development of technology and regulatory procedures.
“The
inability of the operators to even launch the services on the allocated
spectrum is primarily on account of delay in development of the
requisite device and network ecosystem, a prime factor which is
predominantly out of the control of telecom service providers,” COAI had
said.
This
could be the possible reason why telcos like Airtel and Reliance Jio
couldn’t launch services as promised last year in September. Last year,
in September, Airtel was said to be brining its 4G services to Mumbai
and Delhi, but they have been a no-show yet. Airtel currently offers its
4G services through dongles and mobile devices. A report early last
year had hinted that Reliance Jio was almost building up team for its
telecom services that was likely to be launched in the third quarter of
2014 (July-September period) starting from Delhi and Mumbai.
OEMs quite optimistic
Despite
this, OEMs seem quite optimistic about 4G growth in India in 2015.
Sudhin Mathur, Director, Smartphones, Lenovo India who also believes
budget 4G is the next upcoming trend said, “According to a recent report
by PwC, India is expected to have 10-15 million subscribers of 4G LTE
by December 2015. Airtel has already launched 4G in 16 cities and Aircel
holds TD-2300MHz 4G spectrums in eight circles. Besides this, Reliance
with a pan-India license aims to cover 700 cities (including 100
high-priority markets) in this year. We will also see multiple players
launching 4G on a more efficient 1800 MHz spectrum. At the same time,
India is expected to have a mobile Internet user base of 480 million by
2017 and as a result the demand for high speed mobile Internet is also
expected to accelerate further. We expect the year 2015 to be a
game-changer for the telecom industry with the 4G services being rolled
out across the country on a massive scale.”
“There
is no denying the fact that India will be the largest smartphone market
in the world by the end of this decade. The country already has the
fastest growing mobile internet base across the world and is poised to
become the second largest country (by user base) across the world by end
2015. And therefore, as more and more smartphones are made available in
the market, the demand for mobile internet is going to increase by
leaps and bounds,” adds Oppo’s Lu.
How the players currently stand
Reliance
Industries is known to be announcing the commercial launch of its 4G
telecom service of RJio in 2015 entailing investments of Rs 70,000
crore. RJio will initially cover about 5,000 towns and cities accounting
for over 90 percent of urban India, as well as over 215,000 villages in
India and the target is to expand this to over 600,000 villages. It is
the only one with pan-India spectrum availability.
The
telco at the forefront at launching 4G services in India has been
Bharti Airtel so far, covering circles like Nasik, Pune, Panchkula,
Bangalore and more.
Vodafone,
it seems, is focussing on expanding its 3G coverage amidst the surging
data growth. However, some reports had pointed at the company’s plan of
testing 4G services in five circles, namely, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala,
Kolkata and Mumbai, wherein it won 5 MHz or more of airwaves in the 1800
MHz band last year. However, another report pointed out that the
operations will begin only when cheaper 4G mobile devices are readily
available.
We tried contacting the telcos for a quote, but most of them refused to comment.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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