Telecommunications & Technology
Over the past 12 months, unit shipments for mid-sized devices have been stronger than street’s expectations with firms such as IDC now forecasting a 2011-2015 CAGR of 28% for the category (vs. a forecast CAGR of 19% same time last year), a number closer to our last year’s forecast for a 30% growth rate. However, almost the entire upside has come about from Android-based 7-8″ tablets with Windows-based devices being significantly below expectations.
A combination of lower price points and better
Wireless Gate Japan is run by Ikeada, a former NTT DoCoMo wireless engineer who envisaged exploding data usage and established the company in 2004. Wireless Gate (WG) employs only 11 staff but sees this as plenty, despite 30% annual subscriber growth. Wireless Gate has 380,000 customers and remains confident growth will remain sustainable as consumer data needs, much like memory, tend to remain sticky to the downside.
Spectrum and Infrastructure of Wireless Gate [WG]
WG leases lines from carriers and resells to its own customers. The contracts with the carriers are billed on a ‘usage’ basis. WG sees no benefit being in the infrastructure game as it
Currently in India, the current spectrum usage charges (SUC) is escalation based on spectrum holdings. On average, operators pay SUCs in the range of 3.6% to 5.6% of adjusted gross revenue (AGR). We believe that lower SUCs (if implemented) will partly offset the spectrum renewal charges to be paid by the operators at the time of licence renewals. Airtel pays the highest SUCs in the industry and would be the biggest beneficiary of a lower SUC regime. In a scenario of a flat 3% SUC (as recommended by the TRAI), Airtel’s potential NPV benefit is Rs20/sh (vs. Rs39/sh for spectrum renewal charges). However, if a flat SUC is pegged at 5%, then the potential benefits for Bharti and Idea will be reduced to Rs5/sh and Rs1/sh, respectively.
Despite significant Reserve Price cut
The MIIT website posted TD-LTE network access licenses for iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C this morning. This indicates China Mobile will very likely sell such iPhones in near future. The potential launch of iPhone will help CM retain high-end users, and improve its LTE branding.
iPhone 5C / 5S compatible for 5 Mobile Network Modes
iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C each has two models that received TD-LTE network access licenses in China, supporting either three modes (TD-LTE/ TD-SCDMA / GSM) or five modes
The Apple iPhone 5C is essentially the iPhone 5 but with plastic casing in multiple colors—it’s really not 2 new phones. It is priced at $99 for the 16GB WITH A 2-YEAR CONTRACT, the same price the iPhone4S was lowered to last year when the iPhone 5 was released. From this, one might conclude that the 5C is a way for them to be able to discount the 5 with reduced cost. On the Apple website, the 5C is priced at $549, typical pricing from Apple but well above our prior estimate. It is worth noting that the iPhone 5C supports more LTE bands than any other phone in the world, suggesting it will support TD-LTE. While China Mobile was not announced today, it will likely come in future.
Apple iPhone 5S was very much as expected, including a fingerprint reader aimed at passcodes, better camera, new processor. No mention of mobile wallet was made. The 5S is priced along
Bharti Airtel’s subsidiary – Airtel Bangladesh has reportedly selected Huawei Technologies as the network partner for launching 3G services in Bangladesh. The company has already received 3G licence with 5 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum in 2100 MHz band for $105 million in the auction held on September 8, 2013. Further, the company is planning introduce 3G base products in Bangladesh to meet the growing demand of high speed surfing and wireless Internet entertainment.
Recently, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission sold 25 (MHz) of 3G airwaves for $525 million to four telecom operators including
TRAI in its recommendations released yesterday said that for the upcoming 1800Mhz spectrum auction, a 40-70% cut to reserve prices is necessary and suggested that spectrum trading should be allowed and ensure need for a successful auction. We analyze the implications of TRAI Recommendations of 1800MHz.
Lower reserve price by 40-70% for 1800MHz and 900MHz bands – hopefully the operators can at least turn up to the auctions and find some benchmarks for spectrum renewals starting late-2014.
Spectrum trading is allowed but only for
The Advent of SmartPhones has led to the rapid usage of Apps which by design consume network resources resulting in Signal Overloading on Wireless networks. As per White Papers of Network Operators available in public domain, common ways of managing signalling issues are via paging features or queuing.
In Europe, T-Mobile has used the paging channel feature to control signalling traffic, wherein the telco activates the paging channel mode for communication / signalling between RAN and handsets. This reduces signalling by almost 30%, per NSN. Combining messages from various apps, and then transmitting them together when the user brings the mobile phone
With Scarce Spectrum and Number of users per BTS going up, Mobile Operators are looking at optimizing their networks and fine tune the performance to accommodate more. We’ll discuss the Fine-tuning / optimizing radio networks so that any Mobile Network enthusiast can get to know the same without actually being an engineer.
Radio networks comprise a large number of base stations, where each base station covers a limited area called a ‘cell’. Boosting the signal capacity at each cell level can result in a significant reduction in congestion at the network level. Some ways of
addressing this include,
Japanese Consumer Electronics Giant, Sony unveiled its new Xperia Z1 smartphone at the IFA trade show in Berlin on September 4. Details are in line with advance leaks, including a 20- megapixel camera, 5-inch 1080p display, 3,000mAh battery, and waterproofing. The phone is scheduled to go on sale in mid-September. Sony also showed off new lens cameras, a smartwatch, and new tablets.
As with its predecessor, the Xperia Z1 uses across-the-board high performance to differentiate itself from the competition. The camera features not only a high pixel count but also advanced image quality (G Lens), image processing (Bionz engine), and functionality (30 shots/second, starts shooting before shutter is pressed). Image quality, processor speed, storage, and RAM are