India Gets Ready For LTE

India gets ready for LTE with its first LTE conference. “It is not why LTE, but when and how?” says Telecom Additional Secretary Subodh Kumar at India’s first conference on LTE, LTE INDIA 2010.

LTE standardised by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has emerged as the next generation wireless technology that will lead the growth of mobile broadband services later in this decade. Its adoption by service providers around the world has the potential to generate economies of scale unprecedented by any previous generation of wireless networking technology as it becomes the universal 4G mobile platform used by both GSM and CDMA service providers, the technology experts claimed today at India’s first conference on LTE, LTE INDIA 2010

“Quite a lot of spectrum for this is possibily available for this purpose ” Sh Subodh Kumar told at LTE India 2010 today. “If it is not now, certainly later” he added discussing different bands in which Fourth Generation technology could improve upon the customer richness of 3G and reduce costs for the 3G operators. “It is the leading star for the next generation when high speed Internet would become pervasive narrowing the digital divide” claimed Shashi Dharan, managing director of Bharat Exhibitions, the orgnisers of the conference.

The Fourth Generation is on offer globally by 64 telecom service providers in 31 countries, said Mr.Adrian Scrase, head of Mobile Competence Centre of the 3G Partnership Project(3GPP). Most of them are the largest in the world, like Horizon of US and China Mobile. Some 22 LTE based networks would be operational by the end of this year, he added. “Why should India be different?” was the question he proposed.

How LTE would serve the mobile telecom industry was defined at the conference. Also there should be no apprehension for the 3G operators who have offered in this country Rs 70,000 crores for the 3G spectrum. “3G is part of the Fourth Generation” that would subserve 3G also, said Abhay Savargaonkar, senior vice-president, 3G networks, Bharti Airtel. It improves richness of customer experience, reduces cost per megabit and also increases average revenue per user for the operator. For customes also it would bring down cost per bit for heavy users. It would be essential as the “on demand culture” was spreading fast. There were 1.5 billion Apple users, 100 billion You Tube customers, 245 billion Yahoo fans and 413 million Google key-ins at any moment and this was spreading fast- that gave an idea of the bandwidth that would be needed in future. LTE provided the answer.

See LteWorld article for more.

BWA Auction Update Day 2: Bids Reach $670M

BWA Auction has reached to 3199.29 crore ($670 million) rupees at the end of Day. So far 10 rounds of auction has been completed.

Today the Pan-India BWA license cost rose by 844.76 crores. See below statewise details reported by the country's Department of Telecommunications today

Read more at LteWorld

BWA spectrum auction set to begin in India

After 183 rounds of bidding in 34 days, the 3G spectrum auction raised approximately Rs 67,719 crore (US$15 billion) in commitments from the carriers.

A new auction for broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum is expected to begin within days. This new BWA auction will offer 2 blocks of 20MHz in the 2.3GHz band across the same 22 service areas.

As many as 11 operators are in the fray for BWA spectrum. The reserve price for BWA spectrum has been fixed at Rs 1,750 crore and only two slots of 20 MHz each are on the block.

DoT said 11 telecom companies "Aircel Ltd, Augere (Mauritius), Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Reliance WiMax, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar" have qualified for the broadband and wireless access (BWA) auction.

Qualcomm's participation in India's Broadband Wireless Access auction is expected to help the company in accelerating the use of TD-LTE. Unlike WiMAX, TD-LTE does not have a substantial market share for encouraging vendors to develop devices. India's 2.3 GHz spectrum band and rapidly growing demand for high broadband services is well suited for TD-LTE technology.

source:LteWorld

India 3G Spectrum Auction reach $3.33 bln

Bids for nationwide 3G mobile spectrum licences in India reached Rs 150 billion ($3.33 billion) on the 29th day of an auction, an indication the government could earn revenue of more than Rs 600 billion from the sale.

The bids for the pan-India licenses have far exceeded the government's base price of 35 billion rupees.

As of Thursday, 162 rounds of bidding had been completed, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said on its website. Nine mobile operators, including Bharti Airtel , Reliance Communications and Vodafone's Indian unit, are participating in the auction.

When the 3G auction is concluded, the Indian government will commence the auction of its 4G BWA spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band.

For complete details check 3G Auction Update: 14th May 2010

3G auction revenue reaches Rs.48000 cr

India on Friday concluded 137 rounds of an auction to award spectrum for third generation (3G) telecom services in the country, with the government's provisional revenue from the sale of airwaves reaching Rs.48,677.47 crore ($10.7 billion) and nationwide licence price crossing Rs.12,000 crore ($2.6 billion) mark.

According to a senior official in the Department of Telecommunications, “The revenues from 3G auction alone will be over Rs 50,000 crore. The auction is likely to be completed in a day or two, as the demand in some circles is still high.” The Pan-India bid for 3G licence was Rs 12,068.94 crore today, up 244.82 per cent from the base price of Rs 3,500 crore.

Slots for three-four players are available in each of the 22 circles into which the country has been geographically divided for the 3G services, which will facilitate faster connectivity and enable applications such as Internet TV, video-on-demand, audio-video calls and high-speed data exchange.

Nine telecom companies - Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Vodafone Essar, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Aircel, Etisalat, S Tel and Videocon Telecommunications - are participating in the online auction.

See link 3G Auction Update: 7th May 2010 for complete details.