The Hindu Business Line : Race in mobility

IF the belief is that the Unified Licence will see the CDMA players such as Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices sweep the Indian market with the superior spectrum efficiency that their technology claims, Alan Hadden is one person who would beg to differ.

Hadden is President of the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) which consists of providers of technology and business models for GSM operators (those commonly referred to as cellular players here) and is here of course, to push the cause and the possibilities of GSM.

GSM will prevail in India too, just as it is on tops or coming out on tops in most parts of the world, according to him. "GSM worldwide is about 1 billion in subscriber sales, which represents one out of every 6 or 7 people on the earth. During quarter three of this year, GSM has added 180 million, more than the lifetime world growth of CDMA; GSM accounts for 80 per cent of all new subscribers worldwide," he says. Even in North America, GSM is gaining ground and it is becoming popular in South America too, he says.

According to GSA, GSM represents over 80 per cent of the global mobile market and, says Hadden, is present in 206 countries.

The most important feature of GSM is that it is an open standard, he says. A GSM subscriber can take his phone to any other GSM country in the world and get his connection. "This is true international roaming. But if you pick up a CDMA phone and try to get it to work in the US, you are not going to be able to, it is tamper-proof." (This means the handset owner is tied to his mobile service provider.)

True worldwide roaming is very important for the business traveller, he says, who does not have to do anything with his handset. "And for GSM this roaming makes for 20 per cent of revenues." GSM also goes very well with other devices, he says.

On the subject of CDMA's efficient use of spectrum, Hadden talks about new technologies such as EDGE (Enhanced Rates for GSM Evolution) and Adaptive MultiRate Codec (AMR code) which makes for efficient use of spectrum for GSM.

When capital expenditure for cellular operators is under control and Average Revenue Per User is going down, "we are the technology and business model providers for them," says Hadden.

In India, he says AMR is a technological improvement available to all operators. One does not need to make any hardware changes. This technology looks at the radio conditions, if they are not good, it improves them, and where the signalling is good it puts processing power into improving capacity. It expedites download capacity on the Net, too.

And this is just half the story, he says. On the other side, low-cost entry- level AMR handsets are also being planned. "Unlike other new functionalities that are typically available on the high-end handsets first, AMR will first be available in entry-level handsets, thus increasing the penetration of AMR handsets in the networks quite rapidly."

A lot has been said about CDMA being able to deliver 3G like services within the same spectrum while GSM requires new spectrum. This is just not true, says the GSA newsletter. The EDGE ratified 3G technology by the international telecommunications union is deployed within the same spectrum as GSM. "EDGE triples GPRS capacity, and GPRS is something that most of the GSM networks in India are offering today," says Hadden. It also enhances packet data performance and increasing voice capacity and is a simple add-on to GSM/GPRS at incremental cost," says a newsletter.

At the operator level, it calls for no new cell plan or frequency plan, thus safeguarding investments, assets and spectrum. "And 57 operating countries have already deployed this," says Hadden.

The GSA newsletter says that with 50 per cent of the mobile telephones using AMR, voice capacity can increase 50 per cent and with 100 per cent use, it can improve 150 per cent.

AMR is already under implementation by North American companies and several others worldwide, and is coming to India very soon, says Hadden. And, if any operator has bought equipment in the last two or three years, he already has got EDGE sitting there.

Hadden says GSM users in Hong Kong are compressing television programmes and viewing them later at a Thailand home using this technology. There is only one exception that is not offered, that is real time videoconferencing. With EDGE you can get speeds up to 100 kbps, and if you want speed at 1to 2 mbps, then there is W-CDMA (wideband) which, Hadden reminds you, is an extension of GSM technology and not CDMA technology. According to GSA there are 1.4 million users of wCDMA.

It remains to be seen whether EDGE and AMR will keep GSM still ahead of the mobility pack.

kripram@thehindu.co.in

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