Starting this week, I am starting a weekly roundup of the latest developments in the Indian and US wireless markets (or at least a roundup of those developments that catch my attention). Taking a quote from one of my favorite columnists Mike Dano (from RCR Wireless); “there's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for me to rant and rave about whatever rubs me the wrong way”
And without further ado:
India
The Indian wireless market continues to be red-hot. Although I will post a detailed note on the recent growth at a later date, here is a preview of how the numbers look for February 2010.
Wireless Providers:
- Tata Docomo: Tata Docomo launched its GSM Service in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh this week. The service is now available in 286 towns and 4,342 villages across the state. Tata’s flagship brand, Tata Indicom introduced prepaid weekly plans for BlackBerry Users. Although I personally don’t see the value in these plans (why would I want data access one week, but not the next?), Tata seems to have its finger on the pulse of the Indian wireless consumer. For all its innovations in the wireless space, particularly in pricing, Tata was recognized as the most innovative organization of the year by Business Standard.
- Bharti Airtel: Bharti Airtel has been the source of big news this week. Firstly, Bharti awarded a $1.3B contract to Ericsson for managing its network expansion in India. Ericsson’s work for Bharti work will focus on network convergence, expanding Airtel’s network into rural India, and on ensuring that Airtel’s core and transport networks are 3G-ready (to enable the fast rollout of 3G services). Next, Bharti finalized its $10.7B acquisition of Zain’s African assets. This acquisition makes Bharti the 5th largest wireless company in the world, with a subscriber base of about 179 million across 18 countries. In other news, there is a rumor going around that Airtel will drop the prices of the iPhone 3G to as low as Rs.18499 ($411). As expected, this news is generating quite the buzz in India. If true, Bharti’s move is probably aimed at taking the wind out of Vodafone’s sails, who also just launched the 3GS in India (see below).
- Vodafone Essar: Vodafone Essar iPhone 3GS in India with value-packed data plans. Plans start at Rs. 200/month ($4.50) for postpaid plans and Rs. 100/month ($2.25) for prepaid. Imagine AT&T matching this. Never in a million years! Vodafone also seems to be experimenting with video by launching India’s first Mobisodes in association with Vikatan Televista.
- Etisalat: Etisalat, the UAE wireless major, and one the few companies who hadn’t started services in India despite possessing a license, announced that they are launching their services across 15 major circles in India under the Cheers Mobile brand-name. Although details of the service are scarce, some information can be found here.
- Videocon: Sporting a logo that looks a lot like that of Etisalat, Videocon launched its GSM Mobile Services in Chennai this week. Pricing is supposed to be set at ‘sub 1 paise per second’ (roughly 1.3 cents per minute) and the service is expected to be available across 100 cities in India.
- Uninor: Uninor (a subsidiary of Telenor) recently launched wireless services in 8 Indian circles and it already accounts for about 3.6 million customers (in just 3-4 months since launch). This week, it announced that it will start operations in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Goa shortly
- BSNL: BSNL’s results have been a mixed bag. On the one hand it announced that its 3G mobile subscriber mark crossed the 1 Million mark. Probably intending to increase this uptake, BSNL also announced that it would lower the price of its 3G data card from Rs 3800 ($85) to Rs 2500 ($55). Remember, these prices aren’t subsidized like the prices here in the US. BSNL’s 3G data card provides speeds of up to 2 Mbps down with a 6GB cap. In other news, BSNL also announced that it has readied a war chest of Rs14,000 crores ($3B) to defend its market share.
- MTS/Sistema: In similar news, Sistema Shyam announced that it is likely to invest $3-3.5B to expand its CDMA business across the country. It also announced that due to the crowded voice services market and plummeting ARPU’s, it will focus on data services in 2010.
Devices:
There are a ton of new devices being in launched in India each week. I’ll try to cover off some of the launches that I think are worth mentioning.
- The Moto Droid is launching in India as the Motorola Milestone for Rs 32,990 ($735). At these prices the Milestone is more expensive than the iPhone! That said, the Milestone will be the first Android 2.1 powered phone in India, and it comes with lifetime free access to voice-guided street-level maps of 401 cities in India (maps through mapmyindia)
- Sony Ericsson launches XPERIA X10 , Vivaz in India
- Education Tablet Device iProf Launched In India: iProf Learning Solutions India has launched a personal education tablet device called iProf priced at Rs 14,900 ($330). The 7” touch screen, WiFi enabled tablet is made by Archos, and runs the Android OS with a proprietary Learning Management System installed on it.
Regulatory News:
Except for the occasional spark of sheer brilliance, government regulations in India usually tend to be ill-conceived and illogical. Therefore, these ‘announcements’ are a source of headaches (for folks in the wireless industry) and entertainment (for everyone else). Read on -
Except for the occasional spark of sheer brilliance, government regulations in India usually tend to be ill-conceived and illogical. Therefore, these ‘announcements’ are a source of headaches (for folks in the wireless industry) and entertainment (for everyone else). Read on -
- In an interview with Rediff Sachin Pilot, the Minister of State for Telecommunications and Information Technology made an interesting prediction that phone calls could become totally free in India. Considering that India is a telecom market where even VoIP is almost non-existent, Sachin Pilot’s comments are just plain ridiculous.
- Indian engineers for Indian towers: In another boneheaded move, the DoT has said through a directive posted on its site, that the operation and maintenance of telecom networks in India should be done entirely by Indian engineers without any (or minimal) dependence on foreign engineers.
- Mobile Number Portability in India has been postponed yet again until June 30th. Apparently the reason this time is that BSNL, MTNL and Uninor have not yet completed building out their gateways. Worth considering here is the fact that of the three, BSNL and MTNL are government owned entities both of which are losing market share to private operators. So who’s betting money on the June 30th deadline? Not me.
- Following an order by the DoT, Mobile operators' purchase of telecommunications equipment has come to a grinding halt. The DoT order now requires operators to obtain security clearances before buying any telecom related hardware or software.
- Here’s an idea that actually makes some sense - Centre working on project to tap solar energy for cellphone towers
Miscellaneous:
- Here’s a handy guide to Blackberry Plans , Tariffs and Customer Support Numbers in India
- IPL : More than 700,000 videos viewed on mobile phones
- Tech Mahindra arm to launch 6,000 mobile applications: CanvasM, a joint venture between Tech Mahindra and Motorola, is planning to launch 6,000 new indigenously developed applications for mobile phones.
- Nokia offers music for free in India
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US
It’s been a pretty quiet week in the wireless industry here in the US, but thanks to the iPad launch, the weekend promises to be chaotic. Here are some of the highlights for the week (and yes, the iPad is covered here too)
Wireless Carriers:
- Sprint: In its recent ads and at the CTIA, Sprint has been talking up the Wi-Fi capabilities of its 4G devices. The nation's third largest wireless carrier has at least a year-and-a-half head start over its competitors with its 4G network. But to capitalize on that lead, the company has to win as many subscribers for its service as quickly as it can. In a race against the clock, Sprint is leveraging a tried-and-true technology, Wi-Fi, to help entice consumers to sign up for its service. Clearwire launched 4G services in the Houston market this week. But as James Kendrick from AllThingsDigital found out, the transition to 4G is not always smooth. In other news, Sprint introduced the Sprint Free Guarantee this week. Sprint will offer a”Sprint Free Guarantee” on all contracts. Anyone who inks a deal with the Now Network and isn’t satisfied will be able to walk away from it within 30 days without having to pay a penny. Also noteworthy is the fact that Sprint will no longer be able to claim the title of “the most dependable network”. The National Advertising Review Board has asked that Sprint stop making this claim in its ads going forward. Finally, in some good news T. Rowe Price, one of Sprint’s 10 largest investors, said that Sprint should see subscriber turnaround next year
- Verizon Wireless: WSJ recently reported that Verizon will be getting the iPhone soon. Read IDC’s reaction to the WSJ story here. In other device news, Verizon slashed its pricing on the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. Also, the mobile hotspot service is now free on both devices. It is likely that this pricing move is aimed at reducing the huge inventories of these devices that Verizon is rumored to be sitting on. Verizon has started pushing out the BlackBerry OS 5.0 to the Verizon BlackBerry Tour. Among other capabilities, 5.0 adds Push-To-Talk capabilities to the Tour. To take advantage of this feature, Verizon is launching PTT services on the Tour beginning March 30 for $5 on top of a customer’s existing voice and data plan. Finally, Verizon is said to be in talks with Vodafone on ownership options for the wireless business. Options apparently include combining the two companies, having one carrier sell its stake in Verizon Wireless to the other, or paying a dividend to investors. No decisions are imminent, according to sources.
- Cricket: Cricket’s 2010 device lineup has been leaked
- Cox Wireless: Cox Wireless launch details coming soon: Cox Communications said it will provide details on its forthcoming wireless service in the "next few weeks." The company had previously promised to launch its wireless offering in March.
- Clearwire: Clearwire Paves Way for LTE in US: Clearwire has asked the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards body to start work on specs that would allow TD-LTE to be deployed in the US in the 2.6GHz spectrum (which is now used for WiMAX) in a move that further indicates the operator's interest in transitioning to LTE at some point in the future.
Device Manufacturers:
- Research In Motion: Profits were up, but RIM failed to meet expectations in Q4: Revenue at $4.08B was also up 18% compared to the same time last year, but it failed to meet analyst expectations of $4.31B.
- Nokia: MeeGo gets going: source code and developer builds available: In a statement today at the official MeeGo community Web site, Intel Open Source Technology Center director Imad Sousou announced that the MeeGo source code and first installable images are available for download. The platform itself is still incomplete and is under heavy active development. The purpose of this release is to make it possible for third-party developers to begin participating in the project. Personally, I think this half-baked release is meant to divert developers from focusing on other emerging OS platforms like Windows Phone 7.
- Apple: Apple released the iPad this week, and the blogosphere is bursting at its seams with reviews and the like. All things Digital blogger John Paczkowski estimates that Apple Will Sell 14.4 Million iPads in 2011, and 20.1 Million in 2012. Here are a few highlights from the web:
- iPad Previews Around the Web
- iPad Unboxing Videos
- Apple iPad application walkthrough
- Freeing the iPad from AT&T
- iPad Developer Support Continues to Soar
- China Begins Cranking Out iPad Clones
- Microsoft: Microsoft has renamed its mobile OS ‘Windows Phone 7’, and has dropped the word 'Series'
Miscellaneous:
- doubleTwist brings Android Market browsing to the desktop: Android users can now use doubleTwist to browse the latest Android Market offerings right on their desktop. However, doubleTwist still hasn’t added the capability for users to download an Android app to their desktops for synching to their phones via USB.
- Android 2.1 update for DROID now live: the Android 2.1 update for the DROID is now being pushed out. Sprint Hero and Moment users are still waiting!
- LinkedIn for BlackBerry now available: The LinkedIn App for BlackBerry is finally out. The App gives users access to features such as network updates, messages, invitations and connections, etc. The App also has the ability to integrate with the stock BlackBerry Calendar, Contacts and Messaging apps.
- RadioShack for sale? The New York Post is reporting that technology retailer RadioShack is looking for a potential buyer.