Telecommunications & Technology
The present 3G coverage of most telcos even though thin (8% of 2G BTS), is largely via the loading route. At present, telcos are mounting 3G BTS on sites where they already have their 2G BTS and it is not counted as a new tenancy. Telcos pay c8-10% incremental rentals for 3G deployments via the … Read more
According to iResearch, the growth of mobile payments in China is likely to be driven by, The country’s expanding mobile internet economy. iResearch revealed that the scale of China’s mobile internet economy reached RMB97.6b as of 2012, up 148% YoY, much higher than the 46% YoY growth of the desktop-based internet economy during the same … Read more
Contrary to market concerns that China Telecom will be required to invest in TD-LTE capex, management reiterated that the company intends to adopt FDD-LTE when it upgrades to 4G. Even if the MIIT required CT to provide TD-LTE services, the company is open to the option of leasing network capacity from CM rather than investing … Read more
Newspapers are buzz with 4G perceived as a game changer technology which will once again open the floodgates of competition. However, we believe the technological backbone for providing voice services on 4G network is still in nascent stage of evolution and should not pose any substantial threat in the near term (at least 18 months). … Read more
China Mobile is on track to enable 200,000 TD-LTE base stations by end-2013 (the majority an upgrade of existing TD-SCDMA infrastructure at 1.9GHz and this network would cover more than 100 Chinese cities, or c500m people. China Mobile aimed to procure c100m TD-LTE devices in 2013. While many of these will be datacards, this suggests … Read more
Asus will soon launch Padfone Infinity and FonePad. The Padfone Infinity is the third generation device in the Padfone series, and is a smartphone with an integrated docking tablet. The key upgrade in Padfone Infinity to its predecessor is the use of QCOM’s Snapdragon 600 Quad-core CPU (1.7GHz), and larger 5″ display. FonePad is a … Read more
Airtel, India’s Largest Wireless Carrier just a while ago told us that they have tested their 4G LTE network in Pune with Nokia Siemens Networks’ Circuit Switched FallBack (CSFB) voice solution using the underlying GSM Band. With CSFB, the network can transfer customers to GSM platform to make and receive voice calls and access voicemails … Read more
On 31 January, the US International Trade Commission (USITC) started an investigation into Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, and Nokia for alleged patent infringement based on claims by InterDigital (IDCC US, not rated) filed on January 2, 2013. According to Forbes (“US ITC to investigate Samsung, Nokia, Huawei, ZTE for patent infringement”, 1 Feb 2013), the patent … Read more
Almost every year in various kinds of year-ahead predictions about Indian internet, you can find one about mobile internet. So why would 2013 be different? If we look at the latest Gartner Hype Cycle, mobile internet has already climbed to the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ and been on its way to mainstream adoption in less than … Read more
Before the mobile OS and smartphones were full-fledged, applications on mobile were mostly migrations from desktop version or complementary access to existing online services. However, we believe contact-list-based multi-media instant messaging application has potential to become the killer app in the 3G mobile internet age, similar to what SMS has done in the 2G era. … Read more