The Hindu Business Line : Mobile players not investing enough: Crisil

While mobile base is growing at over six million new subscribers per month, Indian wireless operators are not investing enough on setting up infrastructure on the ground that is adequate to provide high-quality services to the growing population of wireless subscribers, says a new study from CRISIL Research.

The outcome of the study assumes significance in the light of a move by the Government to assess whether mobile operators have put in place enough technology and infrastructure to meet the growing demand for mobile services.

“While Indian operators have been making huge investments in network expansion, it appears that the emphasis is more on expanding coverage to newer areas rather than increasing capacity in the existing service areas.

Evidently, operators need to invest much more in creating adequate capacity and consequently, improving their quality of service.

The regulators, on their part, would do well to chalk out a long-term spectrum policy that will encourage efficient use of this scarce resource, and implement number portability to facilitate customer choice,” said the CRISIL report.

Performance

As per the report, Indian operators cater to 1,234 mobile users on an average using a single base station while the global average is 1,460 subscribers.

“This number should actually be much lower in India, as compared to the world average, to achieve comparable network performance. Clearly, the lack of enough base stations is one of the reasons why Indian subscribers have to grapple with issues such as network congestion, call drops, poor voice quality, etc,” the study said.

CRISIL said that wireless operators need to invest heavily in not only increasing coverage but also augmenting capacity in the existing service areas. “If operators do not act soon, it could hurt their long-term growth prospects,” said the research.

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