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New technologies are making quick inroads into India, thanks to aggressive competition in the unified space. Even technology deployment is, today, happening at a faster pace. Earlier, technologies were deployed in India after a gap of two or three years but now this has been reduced to about 6–12 months. A great achievement for a country that has been long considered a laggard in the technology space.

EDGE (enhanced data rates for global evolution), the buzzword for the Indian GSM service providers for quite some time, is now a reality. All the three large private operators in the GSM space-Idea, Hutch, and Bharti have commercially launched the service. Idea Cellular is India's first mobile operator to commercially launch EDGE services. The company launched this service on 28 July 2004 in Delhi, and is the twentieth operator in the world to do so. In terms of EDGE deployment, Idea Cellular is only 13 months behind Cingular Wireless, which commercially launched its services in June 2003.

Meanwhile, Hutch and Bharti were also in the race to be the 'first EDGE operator in India.' Hutch was late by a few hours while Bharti was late by two days with the company launching EDGE in Chandigarh only on 30 July.

Idea is planning to provide live television, video streaming, and mobile Web browsing and Internet surfing at speeds of 80 to 160 kbps. Though Hutch has announced the launch of its service, the company has not launched any EDGE-specific services in the market and is presently providing higher speeds to existing GPRS users. It shows that Hutch was under a lot of pressure, once Idea launched its services. So the company went ahead and issued a press release about its EDGE rollout, without a proper launch or even a press conference.

On the other hand, Bharti, the number one operator in GSM space, was not planning to be left behind in the war of the EDGE. The company commercially launched its EDGE services in Chandigarh and plans to launch services in 13 cities in phase I, which to be completed by Q3 2004. Apart from Chandigarh, the company plans to launch services in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Kolkatta, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore in the second quarter of FY 2004–05, and plans are for launching services in Cochin, Coimabatore, Jaipur, and Lucknow in the third quarter of FY 2004–05.

To be fair, it is for the first time that the Indian GSM industry has shown such speed in going for a new technology. However, due to stiff competition, the service providers launched their offerings without doing their homework properly and have only partially launched their services. It will take some time before all the EDGE pieces are in place. These services will become complete when all the loose ends are tied up-both services as well as pricing. For EDGE to succeed in India, service providers should focus on-handsets, content, business models, billing, spectrum and QoS (quality of service), and inter-carrier issues. The earlier the operators do it, the better it would be for them in terms of a higher subscriber base and increased ARPUs.

Shortage of Handsets
The non-availability of enough EDGE-enabled handsets is a major stumbling block for service providers. Presently, there are not too many vendors, or too many models, even worldwide. Apart from Nokia, there is only a small presence by Motorola and Sony Ericsson. While, LG and Samsung have virtually no presence in EDGE so far, they are expected to launch their EDGE phones in the market soon.

According to the Global Suppliers Association (GSA) update of 20 July 2004, there are around eight EDGE-enabled handsets available in the worldwide market. Of these, around seven models come from Nokia and one from Motorola. Companies like Samsung and LG are yet to launch an EDGE-enabled phone. Meanwhile, Motorola and Sony Ericsson are yet to launch an EDGE model for the Asian/European markets.

In India, GSM operators use the 900 MHz and 1,800 MHz frequencies. In these categories, there are around six handsets and all of them come from Nokia. Nokia has launched three models for the Indian market whereas all other vendors are yet to launch their EDGE phones.

One can expect competing models on the EDGE front only in 2005 when Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, and Motorola launch two to three models worldwide as well as in India.

The lack of handsets will deter people from opting for EDGE now. Sony Ericsson is planning to launch Z500i, an EDGE phone, in the Indian market by the first quarter of 2005, says Sudhin Mathur, general manager, Sony Ericsson, India.

The high prices of handsets also act as a hurdle for EDGE deployment in the country. Due to a monopoly situation, Nokia's EDGE handsets' prices are on the higher side, which are available from Rs 9,669 to Rs 18,479. The company has launched three EDGE models-Nokia 3200 priced at Rs 9,669, Nokia 6220 priced at Rs 14,219, and Nokia 6820 priced at 18,479.

On the other hand, GPRS handsets cost around Rs 6,000 to Rs 9,000. So, one has to pay a premium of around 50 percent if one opts for EDGE. Until and unless prices fall to around the Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 level, India will not witness any significant numbers of EDGE subscribers. But this will only happen when more handsets are launched in the Indian market by the handset vendors.

Content in Doldrums
Today, there is a strong mismatch between the numbers of GPRS handsets sold versus the subscribers of GPRS services. The reason is simple-lack of compelling and attractive content. EDGE service providers-Idea, Hutch, and Bharti-should take a cue from GPRS' failure and provide enough localized content which is easy to use, rich in experience, attractive in nature, catch the users' moods, and provides instant gratification. If service providers can design content that can fulfill a mix of the above criteria, EDGE is bound to make inroads into the heart of the country.

All service providers should educate customers and encourage them to use EDGE services, says Don Price, CTO, mobility, Bharti Tele-ventures.

Content applications can be clubbed under heads like chat, playtime, games, news and information, mobile marketing, and business applications. All these can be segmented as per customers' usage and customers' age, but the focus should be on multimedia services. On the chat front, service providers can look at the entire suite of services like forum and group chat, personal chat, and dating chat. In playtime, one can avail of services like quizzes, polls, jokes, and cartoons. On the game front, users can play monochrome to full-color games, single player to multiplayer games, and embedded to interactive real-time games. On the news front, one can get video clips like interviews, movie highlights, movie previews, music video, live TV, mobile dramas, animation movies, and even mobile movie and novels. On the mobile marketing front, the focus can be on mobile advertisement, direct marketing, special promotions, viral marketing, and on-pack promotions. On the business front, applications can vary from mobile office, location tracking, and field services to telematics services.

Technology platforms such as EDGE are best suited for high-end users who actively browse the Internet and require high data speeds for bandwidth-intensive applications, says Umang Das, managing director, Spice Communications. Service providers have to create a large pool of localized content either through their own resources or in tie ups with other content providers.

No Successful Business Models
EDGE, as a technology, is quiet new. Worldwide, majority of service providers have deployed EDGE services only in 2004. All the service providers are deploying these services in order to cash in on data services and increase their overall ARPU. So, there is no successful business model worldwide and Indian service providers have to formulate their own models.

Worldwide, non-voice services contribute more than 25–30 percent of the overall revenues of service providers. And this increases with the launch of new technologies. In India, presently, non-voice services contribute only 5–6 percent of the overall revenue, so there is lot of scope for upward movement. Service providers should focus on low-price-strategy business models and have services which provide value for the customer.

Since all the new base stations delivered after 2001 are EDGE-ready, service providers have to incur only an additional 5–10 percent capital expenditure on their existing GSM network. If service providers launch services in selected cities, as Bharti is planning to, then the investment will be minimal. But, if service providers are planning for complete coverage in all cities and circles, the business model does not look attractive. There will simply not be enough users of these services to recover the investments made.

Service providers should deploy EDGE selectively in circles in areas where there are high data users and one need not deploy EDGE network completely, says Wolfgang Roessle, VP-sales (South Asia), information and communication mobile networks, Siemens.

Billing Issues
Billing is a critical parameter for any telecom service. With new telecom services being launched every few hours, it throws up new challenges for billing vendors. Services should not be restricted to one set of users only, but all services should be implemented for all users (prepaid and postpaid). For EDGE services, Idea has moved a step ahead by launching live television services for both postpaid and prepaid customers.

Billing is becoming complex with the deployment of new technologies. The new services that are launched focus on real-time, on-demand services, which cross physical and logical boundaries of the service providers and rely on both old and new technologies in all the three dimensions of ICE-computer, telecom, and entertainment. The value of future services will depend always on anytime, anywhere, and anyplace thereby implying ubiquitous connectivity and therefore the ability to bill on the basis of data usage. The existing methodology of billing, which uses call data records and after-the-event processing, is not sufficient. What is needed is online billing. Along with that, even the billing systems will need to be transitioned from today's transaction-based system to usage-based billing systems. They will also need to account for differing quality, with the billing being based on the actual quality of service as per the contract price. If service providers can provide such billing flexibility, the non-voice revenue is bound to move up.

QoS Issues
EDGE services focus on premium segments, so service providers should also take extra precautions to provide excellent quality of service. Otherwise, the service providers might lose their premium customers. One has to also ensure that if the customers pay for the service they also get timely delivery of services, in its entirety and not in parts. Service providers should ensure that, before services are launched, all things are put in place.

In India, service providers have been launching new technologies, but they do not have enough spectrum to support all those services. Presently, even for voice services, the quality of service is not up to the mark. So, in order to launch EDGE services fully, service providers should also ask for more spectrum so as to have a proper balance between their voice and data services. Even though EDGE provides efficiencies of scale both in terms of voice capacity and data capacity, service providers still need more spectrum as they have aggressive plans in terms of increasing the subscriber base. The increased spectrum will help in doing the balancing act between voice and data more efficiently, along with excellent quality of service.

EDGE helps in adding value to the network as one can deploy data services without decreasing quality of voice services, thereby adding value to the network says Wolfgang Roessle.

Inter-carrier Issues
It is good that most of the carriers, which have launched services in India, are focusing on an all-India reach and are not limiting themselves to a few circles. Even the incumbent operator, BSNL, is planning to launch EDGE services once its new GSM orders are implemented. In the current scenario, service providers should sign EDGE-roaming agreements with all the operators within India as well outside so that their subscribers can utilize the service seamlessly, across India as well as outside India.

All the above issues have to be sorted out at the earliest, so that EDGE can stay till the 3G services are launched in the country. For India, 3G is still a long way off, as the policy makers are yet to finalize on the 3G spectrum. Even though it is being finalized, policy makers have to float the license conditions and iron out other details. And then, service providers have to install the equipment and test the service. Only then can they launch it. All this would take say around two years. So, commercial 3G deployment will happen only in 2006-07. Till that time, service providers should use EDGE as a stepping stone to 3G services.

Pravin Prashant