CDMA: GSM’s Knee-jerk WLL Reactions
Nokia and Ericsson have offered GSM operators some patchwork to counter the march of CDMA. Quite unnecessarily
Nareshchandra Laishram
Sunday, January 12, 2003
Coming at the heels of the just launched CDMA WLL-mobile services of Tata and Reliance, GSM's leading lights Nokia and Ericsson brandished their WLL technologies recently. Nokia launched its WLL solutions based on GSM standard in December 2002. A few days later, visiting Ericsson officials told the Indian press that the company had a similar solution to offer. The official line of the two back-to-back announcements was that existing cellular service providers—all of which are on GSM platform—could use the same platform to provide WLL limited mobile services if they wanted to.
The very timing and nature of these media announcements show that GSM vendors are in a grip of panic following the march of CDMA services in India. One would have expected better than knee-jerk reactions from an established camp like GSM. After all, it’s much ahead of the other camps, namely CDMA, PHS and CordDect, as far as the deployment and subscriber base are concerned. It can very well afford to adopt a more systematic, impactive, and longer-term approach.
There is not much new about both the solutions. Both Nokia and Ericsson have had 900/1800 MHz GSM WLL solutions for a long time, though it is only recently that they have started offering WLL solutions for the 800 MHz frequency band—a solution that is tailor-made for India, which has marked the 800 MHz band for basic service operators (BSOs) offering fixed and WLL limited mobile services. It remains to be seen how successful they are with their WLL solutions, for they have already missed out on the huge tenders awarded by BSOs like Reliance Infocom, Tata Teleservices, BSNL, Shyam Telecom, and MTNL for their WLL services. Interestingly, all these major operators, who have adopted CDMA as their platform for WLL services, also operate GSM cellular services. So the inability to market their GSM WLL solutions on time and aggressively enough constitutes a major failure. If there are significant advantages of choosing GSM as the common platform to provide both cellular and WLL services, as Nokia and Ericsson claim, these advantages would have been as good for the other set of players too.
Taking a closer look at the announcements of Nokia and Ericsson, one may deduce that the solutions might be aimed at getting the attention of primarily one company—Bharti Tele-Ventures. At the moment, this is a GSM company, which has a pan-India cellular coverage as well as licenses for basic services in multiple circles. If it goes for GSM as the common platform for providing both cellular as well as WLL, then it would be able to accomplish a quick rollout of basic services, without having to incur on capex and opex for deploying and maintaining an alternate wireless network for basic services.
With the exception of Bharti Tele-Ventures, it is not clear why the remaining cellular companies should go in for GSM WLL solutions. If it is to become a BSO offering among other limited mobile services in the 800 MHz band, the rest have to apply for a basic operator license. Is it really worth doing that? What can a BSO limited mobile operator provide that a cellular operator can't? If the objective of the cellular operator is to expand the market to capture the lower-end subscriber base, it can easily improvise and provide a basic mobile package for them. Cellular service providers have already gone on record saying that they can bring down airtime rates to WLL levels, provided there is level-playing field. As for limiting the mobility to the SDCA, which is a prerequisite for WLL mobile services, cellular companies can achieve this through an easy modification of the network if not just through a software administration. For increasing voice capacity, operators today have the options of going for capacity-enhancement technologies like advanced multirate (AMR) and dynamic frequency and channel allocation (DFCA). AMR boosts voice capacity of GSM by 2.5 times and is available.
On the data front too, GSM has been revving up fast. GPRS already allows for data speeds that can effectively support picture messaging and music downloads. With EDGE, operators can provide three times the data rate and capacity of GPRS.
So, are operators not better served to stick to expanding mobile services on the cellular platform and adding more value to it than look for panaceas like 800-MHz WLL mobile through GSM?
Bharti Tele-Ventures, despite having applied for WLL frequency, is learnt to have reservations about the service. The company’s seen as a vociferous operator fighting a court case to prevent basic operators from providing limited mobile services. Will it make a radical turnaround to say yes to WLL mobile? Unlikely.
Nareshchandra Laishram |
