Telecommunications & Technology
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
At a time when their is Huge Demand for Affordable Broadband in India, the Corrupt Government along with Vested Private players is stalling the development of the 4G LTE Eco-System to favor selected couple of business houses who back the Thugs in the Government.
However, the World’s doesn’t stop innovating as we have seen Korea is now ready to serve her citizens with Broadband LTE / LTE-A after the recent spectrum Auctions.
We’ll disucss what is the Difference between Broadband LTE Vs LTE-Advance Vs LTE – Broadband LTE offers same theoretical speed as that
Investors in the Indian Telecom Space focused on two important issues – Indian Currency and the 4G-LTE Space.
Foreign Investors Wary of Indian Government Flip Flop Policies – We believe that, despite the government’s decision to allow 100% FDI and a depreciating rupee, the experience of some of the players – such as Telenor, Etisalat (licence cancellations), and Vodafone (tax dispute) – has not been encouraging. Separately, the last set of new players giving up their pan-India dreams and shutting down circles suggests that it is hard to make a case for a foreign player to take the new-entrant
China Mobile maintains guidance of building 200,000 LTE base stations in FY13, 20.8% of which will be based on the 2.3GHz E-band spectrum for indoor coverage. The base stations number split between software upgrade (F-band spectrum) and new towers (mainly on D-band spectrum) will partly depend on the equipment price. LTE equipment tender will be completed by August.
Management expects commercial TD-LTE smartphone will be launched by end of 2013, but mainly high-end models. TD-LTE smartphone priced around Rmb1,000 could be available by end of 2014, based on current feedback from chipset and handset vendors.
Reliance Jio Infocomm thinks big like the Ambani DNA. As the Economic Progress in India came to an halt, affordability of 4G got pushed back by few more years. In this backdrop, 2G Voice continues to be the Cash Ringing Register for Telcos.
The State of Voice over LTE
With challenges in commercial VoLTE deployments, circuit switched fallback (CSFB) has been the more popular form of providing voice and data services globally. CSFB allows the subscriber to use data services over 4G networks but switches back to the traditional 2G/3G networks when using voice. Globally, only MetroPCS and Korean operators have launched VoLTE services and the technology is still
The Indian telecom authorities chose TD-LTE, a relatively newer technology and that is still been tried out globally. Globally, there have been commercial rollouts in FD-LTE by large scale operators such as Verizon and AT&T, however TD-LTE rollouts are at a
nascent stage. Hence the device ecosystem for TD-LTE services, especially on the 2.3 GHz spectrum is poor. The following Chart Shows the Global 4G LTE[TD/ FDD] Deployments by various Operators and their operating frequency bands as well.
We attended the China Unicom [CU] Management Call which was mainly focused on Wireless Data Services.
FD-LTE will be mainstream choice for CU. TD-LTE could be a supplementary network to offload part of data traffic. CU will actively prepare an WCDMA upgrade to FD-LTE and do some FD-LTE trials. CU expects regulators will most likely issue a FD-LTE license later than TD-LTE, but is not sure about the time span between TDLTE and FD-LTE licensing. In the long term. CU still has a technology advantage over peers by upgrading WCDMA to LTE.
Management believes the previous guidance
4G LTE has led to a big jump in data consumption behaviour as shown in Figure 3, with Korea leading the global curve with ~1 GB/month and ~1.8 GB/month of data usage in 2011 & 2012, respectively, versus the global average of 342 MB/month and 1.3 GB/month. The Cisco Visual Networking Index is forecasting a 30.8% CAGR for 2012-17 in average global traffic per device with smartphones accounting for ~70% of data traffic by 2017.
LTE ARPU lies in its tiered data plans. Unlike Korea’s 3G
For markets like India and Africa, the data growth story is linked to low cost smart-phones. With LTE deployments taking place simultaneously in India and the globe, Indian operators face a big challenge in terms of driving LTE economics. India would lag the US in LTE affordability by 11 years based on a 20% yearly rate of decline in technology costs and by 5 years based on a 40% yearly rate of decline in technology costs.
All BWA operators in India will launch the TD version of LTE and their fate is somewhat dependant on the progress made by China Mobile. China Mobile will not be entirely dependant on low-cost smartphones to drive traction on LTE. Indian operators, on the other hand, may have to wait for the LTE ecosystem to align
During July-October 2013, Korea Telecom will double the data allowance for subscribers that are on its 4G LTE tariff plans that offer ‘unlimited’ voice. (Please refer to our sector report from 11 April 2013 for more details on ‘unlimited’ voice tariff plans.) Korean consumers already enjoy real speeds of 10-30Mbps on 4G LTE networks, and operators are increasing speeds further through 4G LTE-Advanced. As such, we may be reaching a level where mobile data speed difference is not noticeable for most users.
SKT has announced that it will be offering higher data speeds through 4G LTE-Advanced technology. We think this may have caused concerns for KT about falling behind in competition until KT is also able