LTE is still dream for Indians or we will get some real experience of wireless broadband...

 Its been almost one and half  years ,since BWA (LTE /4G )licenses have been awarded by DOT (govt.).
We are not seeing really much action from operators to start operations except some pilot projects launched and getting tested by some operators.

Before going into what we will get from LTE /4G !  ....lets first understand in brief what it is really ?

LTE (Long Term Evolution) is access technology after release 8 of 3GPP like GSM or CDMA but its name given to the migration phase from 3G to 4G in Wireless Telecommunication evolution.
3G as defined by ITU -T /3GPP is an any cellular technology which will give you speed upto 2 Mbps wireless download speed and 365 Kbps upload speed. Which includes UMTS, EVDO/DV, etc.

On same lines, 4G is defined by ITU -T /3GPP is an any cellular technology which will give you speed up to 1000 Mbps wireless download speed.

So , as evolution from 2 Mbps to 1000 Mbps had been taking place in last decade the period in between is called an LTE phase (After release 7 of 3GPP ).
Till , 3G there were two separate bodies which were developing standards for cellular communication i,.e 3GPP for GSM and 3GPP2 for CDMA , they had their own versions of 2G,2.5G and 3G.
however with LTE this is expected to end and unanimous single standards to be accepted by cellular  operators.
However , there is one more wireless network pedigree which has its say here that is Wifi (wireless IP communications) technology its has its own next generation technology which is Wi -max(all IP network which supports mobility).
Initially , there was stiff competition between LTE and Wi-max to capture market space.

Now ,coming back to India, here government has  given the licenses of BWA saying its use is technology neutral. means it can be used by operator for any 4G technology i.e LTE /Wi-max.
But ,as expected many existing cellular operator will prefer natural evolution i.e from 3G to LTE.
and it can be seen Airtel already launched pilot project in some cities in India.
however interesting thing is RIL who is only pan India 4G license holder who will be starting greenfield operations has chosen TD - LTE is the access technology.
 However , both of them are struggling to get  vendors and network infrastructure right , as costs are very high, and technology itself is new.
RIL has already delayed twice launch date for services.
However ,its interesting to see that,  Indian market where 3G itself has not reached widely and not matured enough(data speeds are not up to the expectation in wider areas except major cities).
Ecosystem for the same (3G) has been getting in place. HOW THE INDIAN CUSTOMER will react to 4Gs(Pandora box)



 

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