WIRELESS & MOBILE: Who Needs to Be Wired Up?

Beyond Wires
The wiring-up of urban India is well under way. The challenge facing planners is to take connectivity to the people—beyond big cities and fiber optics

“The phones-for-all dream has finally come true—not due to wireless, but due to wireless coupled with affordability”

Ashok Jhunjhunwala

Late in 1993, then DoT secretary N Vittal announced that he would provide phones on demand in coming years. Quizzed about where the DoT would get the large investment required, he answered that private operators would be brought in. When someone pointed out that this might imply multiple operators digging the same roads, he responded that wireless access would be used in future to overcome the problem.

We have come a long way. Much of what Vittal spoke has happened. But the key to this success was not just wireless, but wireless coupled with affordability.

At that time an operator needed Rs 40,000 to install a phone line in India. To beak even after all the finance, depreciation and operating costs, the operator needed per-subscriber revenues which not more than 2 percent of Indian homes could afford.

It took some time to realize that the Indian market would really explode only when the cost was brought down. Backbone network costs were already coming down with fiber optics. Access was the bottleneck. And wireless was a good answer—not just for rapidly expanding the network, but also in making it affordable.

Today, GSM and IS-95 (CDMA) systems provide cost effective mobile access in cities. Both are mobile cellular systems, the former derived from Europe, the latter, from the US. It is unfortunate that policy muddles like limited mobility and dissimilar licensing and interconnect terms have undermined competition, which would have brought down end-user cost further. The service that these systems provide is primarily voice telephony. GPRS and 3G-1X upgrades of these systems would provide some data to mobiles and PDAs, but would not provide the kind of Internet connection we are used to at home and office, even with dial-up connections, leave alone cable or DSL.

WLL and Data

Wireless in local loop technology, applied for last-mile “limited mobility” connectivity in India, has been causing sleepless nights to mobile operators. That’s because its tariffs are similar to land-line: free incoming, outgoing at Rs 1.40 for 3 minutes, and monthly rentals now reduced to near-land-line levels. The only barrier remains the cost of the handsets. But while commercial CDMA WLL service in India does not offer data (and would not exceed 9.6 kbps if it did), the indigenous WLL-based CorDECT technology is being used to connect far-flung rural PC kiosks at a low cost at up to 10 km distances. CorDECT is the only cost-effective WLL system in the world today that provides simultaneous toll-quality voice and 35/70 kbps Internet access, at a total installed cost of about Rs 15,000, and it is being deployed in Brazil and Argentina as well. CorDECT was developed jointly by IIT Madras’ TeNeT group with Midas Communication Tech, Chennai, and Analog Devices, Inc.

The indigenously-developed corDECT WLL system attempts to fill the gap by providing fixed wireless connections to homes and offices. Providing simultaneous telephony and 35 kbps Internet (and premier service at 70 kbps) at very low cost, it provides a true "wire-line replacement." While gaining some presence in urban areas, it is the most cost-effective system in small towns and rural areas, because of its low initial investment requirement.

In the meantime, wireless is starting to play a new role in the developed world. In countries like the USA, laptops are used widely. While they are very convenient systems to carry to classrooms, cafeterias, offices, conference centers, airports, railway station and even in shopping malls, the key is to stay connected.

Snapshots

VoIP

VoIP was liberalized on April 1, 2002, causing increasing awareness and interest: 43% of Indian corporates are considering using it, according to an IDC survey. Actually, there is little impact of the liberalization on corporates: VoIP was always allowed in a closed user group that is not connected to public phone network, and status quo remains, requiring separate VoIP “internal” phones that are not connected to the corporate EPABX. The benefit post-April is largely on the consumer, with ISPs and phone companies offering VoIP-based phone cards. But the biggest impact on telecom in 2002 have been private basic-telephony operators—and the Bharti-led lowering of long-distance rates to a maximum of Rs 9 per minute within India, causing a sharp increase in usage.

Telephony

38.5 million lines
Fixed phone lines in India, March 2002. BSNL and MTNL made up 37.9 million, while the new private players contributed 0.6 million.

Mobiles

6.4 million subscribers
March 2002—80% growth. BSNL and MTNL contributed just 0.2 million: the rest were private. Cellular networks covered 1,400 towns and villages, and saw an average of 220 minutes per month of use by subscribers

SMS

Over 80% of Chennai’s mobile users use SMS, as against only 60% in Mumbai. However, Chennai users average only 1.6 messages per day, the figure being several times higher for females than males. The duration of the average call is just 2 minute—from 1 minute per call in Bangalore to 2.4 minutes per call in Delhi.

WLAN

Wireless LAN, usually referring to the more popular 802.11b (WiFi) standard, had zero penetration in 2001. In the way are arcane licensing and regulation: even a "dealer’s demo license" takes six months to get, and users need licenses. The 2.4 GHz spectrum is expected to be de-regulated for indoor use by August 2002. That, and further price drops (WiFi PC cards are around Rs 8,000 today, and small-office WiFi hubs are about Rs 20,000), could see marginal early-adopter usage in India in 2002, with about 500 WiFi PC cards and about 50 hubs or access devices selling in the calendar year.

Handhelds

IDC estimated the "smart handheld devices" market in India at 4,084 units in 2001—legal channels only. Dataquest estimates the market, including all channels, to be several times this. Though gray channel sales are not significant in this segment (excluding cheap digital diaries), over 15,000 devices PDAs are likely to be acquired abroad by foreign travelers in 2002. These will include Palm and Windows CE/Pocket PC handhelds, and PDA-phones of the Nokia 9210, Ericsson R380, and handspring Treo genre.

India PDA Market (Units) for 2001
Palm	1925
Win CE/ Pocket PC	2041
Others	118
Total	4084
Source: IDC, 2002

Wireless LANs, in the form of the IEEE’s 802.11 standard, have emerged as an excellent way for the laptop user to remain connected to the network, whether in the office or in a public park or in a coffee shop—at up to 11 Mbps. Even at home, people have installed 802.11 access nodes, and move with their laptops from one room to another. As the radio waves can leak outside the homes, you can find laptop users parked in their cars somewhere, "catching" a stray signal.. And an MIT Media Labs project brings a mail van with a WLAN card in daily to remote villages, for an hour of wireless broadband daily..

How is 802.11 faring in India? There are several problems. Laptops are not as common. Second, the 802.11 spectrum in India is regulated even for indoor use, as Nicholas Negroponte pointed out to Pramod Mahajan.

This is expected to change now, enabling WiFi use in offices and conference halls. However, 802.11 is also being projected by some as providing freedom from high internet charges and a multi-hop 802.11 network as an alternative means to connect urban (and even rural) areas of India. While such an alternative access network can work and would be a boon, the key to high Internet charges in India lies elsewhere. It is the high international Internet leased line cost and the absence of direct connectivity between ISPs in India, which drives the Internet charges: but that is another story. 802.11 devices are also expensive today.

We are still working with early versions of the wireless technologies to come, those, which will deliver more for less money.

Wireless will thus continue to play a dominant role in changing the telecom network and thereby the lives of people in India and the world.

The author is a professor of electrical engineering and leads the IIT Madras telecom and computer networks (TeNeT) group. He has driven key developments in network technology, including wireless systems. He was honored with the Padmashree this year. mail@dqindia.com