The Hindu Business Line : It makes sense to share

WHILE 80 per cent of the world's population have mobile coverage, only 30 per cent are actually connected. The rest do not even have mobile coverage, according to GSMA, the global association of GSM technology players.

So, if the wireless revolution in the world is to touch these people, then first those who are covered must be able to afford the services and second, there must be a viable way found to provide connectivity to those not covered, and following that a viable way found for operators to provide these people affordable services.

Part of the problem is already being addressed on the ground. Handset manufacturers are introducing low-priced handsets for the developing and underdeveloped markets; the telecommunications industry everywhere is pushing for government and regulator levies to be brought down so that services too become affordable.

But how does one get to cover the unconnected areas to reach the poorest of the poor? One of the key moves in the future would be sharing — sharing of infrastructure on the part of operators and shared access to voice and data for the consumers.

Bharti, Hutch, in fact, most of the larger Indian players have started getting into it. As for shared access, with those who cannot even afford a handset, one can talk only of shared access, says a member of the Cellular Operators Association of India, which represents GSM players in the country.

But that comes later, the first being the issue of providing connectivity. For example, in India, the teledensity is 32 per cent in the urban sector and only 2 per cent in the rural, according to TRAI. While operators talk of connecting 6,000 to 10,000 towns and villages in the country with their networks, the number of villages alone is 6 lakh!

Also, all these operators follow the same pattern in adding towns and villages to their connectivity, going to the most viable first. Clearly no operator can find it viable to rollout where the population cannot afford the services.

But infrastructure sharing can help operators tide over this problem easier. To reach the 200 million subscriber mark in 2007, there would be 1,00,000 mobile `sites' required, each costing $67,000, says Umang Das, Managing Director, Spice Communications. If each cell site is shared by just three operators , the cost gets reduced to $22,333 per cell site. This, according to him, will minimise costs for the operator, and even see the emergence of new players and operators.

According to him, a passive infrastructure can be established through independent and neutral providers, with the commercial and technical terms to be pre-established by an industry body on real basis.

"The policy must make sharing mandatory and not like the present barter arrangements," he says.

Currently operators arrive at bilateral agreements between themselves to share infrastructure, many of them are doing this to reduce costs.

But infrastructure sharing is not yet part of an organised drive to provide affordable coverage on a war footing, say operators. This will increasingly have to be encouraged and incentivised.

For example, site sharing (which also led to lower power consumption) was one of the many steps taken by Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd to reduce its losses and help it to attain operating profit during the quarter ended December 31, 2005, according to Charles Anthony, Managing Director of the company.

Das says sharing of infrastructure is already happening in the BPO sector and an open dialogue for sharing of infrastructure for telecom growth is required as well.

kripram@thehindu.co.in

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