Two months back when India auctioned 3G & BWA (Read: Broadband Wireless Access) spectrum, speculations were rife about ‘Broadband Penetration in India’. As telephone subscriber base crossing 620 million, with more than 100{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} urban penetration, less than 1{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} population in India can boast to have access to broadband Internet. But this is likely to change soon, when we get to see rollout of NGN (Read: Next Generation Networks) across India, once spectrum will be awarded to winning bidders from Sep-2010.
According to Maravedis, the market research firm, India is expected to see more than 90 million BWA subscribers by 2015. If all goes well, according to the report, India is likely to see ‘Broadband revolution’, just like ongoing mobile revolution. At present, India doesn’t have any broadband wireless market. Most of the 9 million broadband subscribers are connected with ADSL lines, with about 0.9 million data card subscribers. And now when India’s PC penetration crossing 75 million mark, coupled with 22{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} annual growth in notebook base, there’s enough potential for Broadband revolution in India.
Not only PC/Notebooks, but mobile handsets sale is going upward. Indian operators are also mulling over device bundling strategy, which will bring 3G handset prices down to Rs 5000. 3G handset prices are always considered barrier for 3G adoption in country where cheapest GSM/2G handset comes at cost of just Rs 700.
Key findings of the report can be summarized as:
- Indian telecom market has potential to reach 95 million broadband subscribers by 2015, mostly driven by 3G WCDMA/EVDO & BWA LTE/WiMAX (80{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of total). Out of these, 40 million will log on to 3G data services, either with USB Dongles, Modem or 3G Data cards.
- TD-LTE will become commercially viable only after 2013 and expected to grab 4.9 million subscribers by 2015.
- Considering slow adoption to LTE, existing BWA Auction winners, would invest in ‘WiMAX First, LTE Later’ strategy. WiMAX 802.16e subscribers base is likely to reach 28.5 million by 2015. This entire base may migrate to LTE depending on LTE’s commercial viability & device prices.
- Cumulative more than 5, 00,000 BWA Base Station Sectors will be rolled out by BWA Operators by 2015, giving $1 billion opportunity to infrastructure vendors, to sell BWA BTSs.
- The current data card market in India is about 0.9 million users, which is likely to expand, once 3G data cards are available. Then 2G data card market will lose its bastion and make way to NGN Card market.
The report also focuses on some key issues like In building Coverage (As we move towards higher frequency band, Indoor penetration concerns will pop-up more) , crunch of trained RF manpower, crammed tower space and power supplies issue.
Except BSNL/MTNL no company has pan-India 3G license. With Reliance Industries acquiring Infotel, it will go head on with Qualcomm, who has BWA license in Mumbai & Delhi. But as rightly said in report, unless we create vibrant application industry, along with availability of low cost, feature rich handsets, growth in BWA industry may get slowed down. Long way to go for ‘Broadband Revolution’ in India.