Telcos Revenue crisis

most of the Telecom companies stocks were trembled by 50 percent in last month

after the per second billing

When is it gonna consolidate ... Indian Telecom Industry.?

Most of the telecom analysts ,industry veterans are saying since long time that telecom industry in India has to consolidate and it will.

But , no one knows when exactly it is gonna happen , because one can say that since last 2 -3 years telecom industry in India is at its worst times. Reasons were many like over regulated market by Govt. , cost of operations because of auctions of BW and of course stiff non sustainable competition. 

Losses by operators on balance sheet are getting more and more. ( Feels like It could be hard time for  CAs and finance dept. of operators to manipulate the numbers and make balance sheet looks better for Stocks markets.)

So , one of the way forward is as everyone is saying CONSOLIDATION  !!! . But how this will happen is very difficult to say, because  most of the companies are promoted by Big corporate families.

No business house is willing to leave this pie of telecom in their portfolio. Measure reason may be there traditional approach towards business or they still feel that we can revive and still there is money.
Other , reason is foreign operators are also not willing to leave because they have invested much amount and will be difficult to write off the same and other is its too difficult to sale the spectrum and go away because of M & A norms by government.

Consequences on Telecom industry at large of Indian courts decisions to cancel 122 licenses

Last week of January 2012 came an historic judgement by Supreme Court on petition by Subramanyam Swami. Many middle class people or common man would have felt that it’s a brave decision by Supreme Court towards curbing corruption and giving strong signals to the corrupt babus and political leaders.
Statement in short says “licences given since 2008 will become redundant and auction to be held again for these spectrum licenses within four months.” Actually, if one thinks about larger perspective then its big blow for many new operators and overall to industry as whole.
Current situation very well explained by on of the TM FORUMs twit:
“122 licences were” WILL COMPLETE THIS BLOG SOON

Telecom and IT to ICT: New ghost in town"PCRF" for telecom giants in Indi...

Telecom and IT to ICT: New ghost in town"PCRF" for telecom giants in Indi...: Since launch of 3G services every strategist and research firms reports has been talking about,backbone data network explosion due to hig...

New ghost in town"PCRF" for telecom giants in India

Since launch of 3G services every strategist and research firms reports has been talking about,backbone data network explosion due to high BW and data consuming applications.
Other thing was to managing traffic intelligently to get maximum out of limited network resources. (providing regulated QoS as per application and customer).

So with these predictions operators have started looking for entity who can handle these issues.

The obvious answer was an functional entity from IMS network (NGN ) framework that is PCRF(Policy and Charging Rule function). PCRF is an functional block in IMS framework and not an device or network element with defined function and boundary.

PCRF is collection of elements which will include many subsystems like policy manager with administrator, subscriber repository and trigger manager (for communication with network)

So as per IMS framework, its upto designer how he implements the PCRF functionality. Indian operators have started implementation of PCRF functionality in networks, with 3G roll out itself.

However many are struggling with this new ghost in town ,because of misconceptions about PCRF, lack of long term vision for cellular networks and lack of readiness of tailor made solutions by OEMs(manufacturers).

Some of the operators have got this PCRF as a COTS product (like Black box) , no one knows what it can do. There are challenges in implementation because this function need some BSS data of customer (Billing info, customer category, preferences) to do an network monitoring and controlling.
So integration between BSS systems with PCRF is very difficult as everyone was treating OSS/BSS and network systems are different silos with one narrow interface of provisioning.

After integrating PCRF in network ,now next challenge is use cases which operators business team wants to implement and what COTS vendor is offering.

Because there are many so called killer use cases like URL based charging and QoS assignment,
Parental control, Real time speed and session monitoring.
Which are still not matured and getting trail and error-ed in operator network.

Global Economy ...Tumbling ? Reality ?? or Ghost Created by Economists ???

On Thursday Stock Markets crashed worldwide ,after the announcement of FED that there will be no stimulus package for American Market .

The way growth rate and GDP is going in US , and recent downgrade of ratings by reais worrisome for m

INDIA After 1year since 3G license were given by DOT (INDIAN GOVT.)

The huge amounts were paid by operators for scarce 3G spectrum last year .
In return they got small piece of spectrum 5 Mhz in 2100 band ,with so many stringent conditions, which have made them more debt ridden , and less competitive.

Now almost all operators have rolled out 3G services in at least metros, however the excitement which was there before launch of 3G in India , not truly meeting the expectations of customers as well as operators.
Reason behind saying this is , there is not significant improvement in ARPUs or profitability of operators ,and customers response also not picking up for this new service. The only service which everyone advertised or made hype with 3G technology i.e video calling , has not lived the expectations.

Video calling service has not been lived to expectation because :
1) Bad picture quality because of less BW 5 Mhz at Radio access and carrying data over circuit switched network (64KBPS) (via MSC) . TRAI has made compulsion for using circuit swithed technology at core because of security concerns.
2) The 3G multifeature handsets which are there in market are still much costlier for common Indians.
3) Operators are failed to create market awareness and use cases for unique Indian market with these so called magic 3G services for common man.

There are many ways ahead for operators for making this technology as success in India and many operators have already started learning from there mistakes .
Followling are the some key areas where lies the money for operators :

1) Partnering with OEMs for making bundled offer of service+ device in subsidized rate. Where new innovative devices like netbooks, smartphones other connectivity enabled devices where data will be consumed by these devices will be more and more which will add to operators revenue.
2) Getting tied up with application and content vendor , where soft clients of applications could be given on devices , kept on operators VAS portals.
Which will help to generate revenue based on giving personalized experienced with URL based rating.
3) moving the network infrastructure on IP from legacy networks SS7 and other .

and many more innovations operators can think of .....