I visited India August 19-22, at the end of the monsoon, to study 3G multimedia services potential. We all know that 190 million mobile subscribers (+ 7 million/month) were signed in 5 years, as a result of lower rates, cheaper handsets and networks expansion into rural areas. On the fixed line side, there are 2.5 million broadband out of 40 million connections and these are not growing at all. India has 12 telecoms operators competing for world's extreme blended ARPU of 7$ and MOU approaching 400 min. according to regulator TRAI. TRAI's approach is to license 10 operators per state but there is no sight of number portability. Current mobile penetration below 20%, given a population of 1.1 billion, but with huge industry investment it should grow this to 60% by 2010. The government plans targets 500 million subscribers by 2010.Will the boom lead to multimedia ?
During this visit, I was happily surprised to hear about the interest for 3G instant messaging and mobile video services as I had not expected from market focused on subscriber/MHz optimization. Several operators offer mobile video streaming and download services or are planning for this in 2008.
Hera also industry investments are neeeded. On August 23rd, Nokia's CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was also in New Delhi announcing $100 million investment by Nokia Siemens Network in Nokia's $500 million Chennai facility which produced 60 million handsets for India's market since 2006 and operates managed networks. And Vodafone is bound to introduce Vodafone live multimedia services after deploying the cheaper handsets.
Incredible India mobile operator's tour 
Encouraged by India's advertising motto's my HP hosts arranged for a tour of operators : Vaibhav Sahai, Delphine Reffet and Jagdeep Jagdeep Sekhon . Up to date subscriber statistics are available from the cellular operators association of India (COAI)
Reliance Communications, Mumbai.
Business overview :>35 million subscribers, expanding to cities of 5K inhabitants.
Network : 97% on CDMA, 3% on GSM. ARPU is at 9$ (370 INR). The network supports CDMA 2000 EVDO 1xRTT. The evolution plans for a migration towards 3G WCDMA. Reliance acquired FLAG http://www.flagtelecom.com/ long distance network for 450M$. Reliance independent tower company RTIL plans to deploy 20,000 multi-tenant/technology towers in 2007.They have an IMS / SIP network test bed with softswitches from Alcatel-Lucent. Video : Have installed mobile video streaming (Apple Darwin). Reliance broadband offers Adlab
Tata Teleservices, Mumbai
Trying to convince Tata requires enthusiasm...
Business overview : > 18 million subscribers (Indicom brand) and a postpaid that let's you choose your number.
Network :CDMA 2000 1xRTT network
Video : interesting discussions on video for CDMA2000
BPL Mobile, Mumbai
Business overview : 1 million premium subscribers from urban Mumbai. BPL mobile is a great brand, strong in value-added data services. They introduced Voice SMS and ring-back-tones on the Indian market
Network : GSM
Video : offer a Mobile TV and music service on GPRS (37.52 Kbps) with WAP menu and Realplayer in handsets (30 models from Nokia, Motorola and SonyEricsson) Tariffs are : real-time streaming 0.05-0.1$ (2-5 INR/min up to 15 min), download
PPV 0.25-0.5$ (10-15 INR). Content includes CNBC, AajTak, CNBC, Aawaz.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL), (not visited)
Business overview : 31 million mobile subscribers (CellOne brand) + 34 million fixed lines including 2.5 million internet subscribers, 0.5 million broadband subscribers. BSNL is the state-owned incumbent operator and consequently focuses on reach to rural areas (7000 cities, 5 million villages).
Network : GSM (20 million) , 18000 BTS, 37000 SSPs, plans to expand to 125 million fixed lines.
IDEA Cellular, New Delhi
Business overview : 17 million subscribers; blended ARPU is 9$ (450 INR). Operates in 11 circles covering 45% of population. Idea completed an IPO to finance growth.
Network : GSM EDGE moving to WCDMA
Video : plans to introduce Mobile TV and personal mobile video calls at 3G roll-out
Spice Communications (not visited)
Business overview :3 million subscribers, operates in 2 states. 46% ownership by Telecom Malaysia.
Network : GSM/GPRS
Developping multimedia value added services in India
So with the charm of Bollywood and the most cost-effective mobile network infrastrure in the world, could we expect value-added services growth? Currently it's more below 10% of ARPU including data charges. But several of OpenCall partners expect to change this.
Kirusa
Voice SMS has been supplied by Kirusa to BPL and Idea and is extremely successful in India. It delivers value add SMS feature over voice. And it's so simple : Sending :dial *recipient's phone number, record a 30 second message, hang-up. The message is delivered in the SMS inbox. Retrieving : dial *0* to listen to all new Voice SMS
Bharti Telesoft
At Bharti Telesoft with Vaibhav Sahai
They provide VAS platforms worldwide such as m-entertainment solutions, messaging. With HP OpenCall they developed a mobile surveillance with streaming live/stored video to handsets. Their platform VDP facilitates multimedia (audio/video/data) content hosting, distribution, and delivery.
One97 Communications
With Vijay Shekhar Sharma
One97 is a king of ring-tones and traditional value-added services they supply to most operators in India. They have a 3G video dating service. A new way to speed date, through one single video call the users gets to date five persons. on WAP of with an SMS, participants select a category, then participate to 5 one-on-one video calls 1 minute each, all set-up by the service. And obviously, they rate and send messages the most interesting dates. And with had great discussion about mobile advertising, social and content services. We coined the expression the phone address book is the largest social network .
Vijay on mobile advertising video
Whatever your personal interest in dating, I recommend you start with Vijay. He gave me an insight into the success of Indian start-ups. He has vision, energy and most important he is fun.
My phone's favorite ring tone now includes Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.
