Looking for 3G's worthy partners

For mobile broadband to catch up as a mass phenomenon, telcos could consider a full-blown Wi-Fi as 3G's fallback option but not a narrowband GPRS

Mobile telecommunication technologies have almost always competed among themselves, vying for telcos’ attentions. At an earlier point in time, for example, it was GSM vs CDMA, and in the relatively recent times, it has been LTE vs WiMAX.

Historically speaking, it’s been that critical moment of decision making at telecom companies and their managements’ abilities to put the bets on the right telecom technology that has distinguished leaders from the followers. Indeed, that decision making hasn’t always been easy but then having said that, it hasn’t been too complicated either.

Much has changed since. Today, the stage for a telco’s business success is set not just by picking up one right wide-area network technology but also by laying due emphasis on the complementary and supplementary ones.

Take the case of 3G for example. To go for 3G is not so much of a complex decision making to do but to also emphasise upon the fallback and offload alternatives is.

Today, the limited availability of 3G spectrum bands to telcos in India poses a significant challenge in addressing their mobile broadband goals of delivering high-quality customer experience to subscribers.

Moreover, the lack of a pan-India license has posed an ongoing hurdle in the path of new customer acquisitions. While telcos do have the typical EDGE and GPRS fallback strategies in place for their non-3G coverage areas, the inherent bandwidth limitations of those technologies make them a poor alternative to 3G. The result is a drastically diminished customer experience that stops mobile broadband from catching up as a mass phenomenon.

It is already a well acknowledged fact that telcos have been facing 3G opportunity losses because they are mostly unable to sign up potential 3G subscribers in a circle where they don’t have a 3G license.

While telcos do have a right to get away by blaming the regulatory and licensing uncertainties and challenges for the various sets of hurdles they face today, that may not help their business situation much. Moreover, even if the current set of regulatory challenges goes away, there is no guarantee that other surprises may not be in store.

The way ahead could perhaps lie in building fallback network alternatives that can not only be worthy substitutes for 3G but could also overcome the license limitations of 3G or BWA.

The fact remains that the complementary and supplementary characteristics of technologies like small cells and Wi-Fi have been much overlooked. An integrated networking strategy that duly leverages the strengths of these technologies could serve the purpose.

After all, convergence really is mostly about achieving a virtuous confluence of various technologies and not exactly about over-betting on a single technology and considering it as a panacea for all network difficulties.

Yes, one would have assumed that the deployments of 3G in a number of markets globally would have matured it enough to make the deployment a cakewalk for Indian telcos, once they acquired the required spectrum.

That, obviously, has not been the case. The maturity of 3G also means that it is also ripe for disruptions, which are coming at speed from multiple directions.

On one side, the over-the-top (OTT) players are using the app stores to render the traditional VAS streams out of date. At the same time, broadband wireless access (BWA) technologies like LTE have already arrived and it is a matter of time when they would be threatening to push 3G to a wall.

Given that those full-blooded onslaughts would still be a few years away, it is important that telcos move quickly enough to recoup their 3G investments. An integrated approach could only make the industry’s transition from a voice-and-VAS age to a data-and-apps era complete.

Deepak Kumar is Founder Analyst at BusinessandMarket.net and specializes in market research and strategic advisory