CDMA: The die is cast

Pravin Prashant

The wireless market in India has been doing exceptionally well, with a subscriber base of around 10.15 million as of October 2002. In India, GSM has a 5—6 year lead time in comparison to CDMA and dominates the wireless scene with around 9 million subscribers as compared to CDMA, which is estimated to have around 1.15 million subscribers.

But CDMA has a faster growth rate

While the GSM network is inducting 0.4—0.5 million subscribers per month, CDMA network is adding around 0.11 million subscribers. With the ‘big bang’ launch of Reliance Infocomm’s services and with Tata launching services in new circles, 0.36 million CDMA subscribers are likely to be added per month.

According to Qualcomm, the worldwide CDMA subscriber base stands at around 134 million (as of September 2002). Of this, Asia-Pacific contributes around 50 million. In India, of the 1.15 million CDMA subscribers, around 440,000 are for WLL (M) and the rest are for fixed wireless terminals (FWT). On the CDMA front, things are moving at a fast pace, with Tata Teleservices launching services in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, to be followed by launches in Delhi and Gujarat in the first half of December 2002. Reliance Infocomm is also moving as per the schedule of 28 December. BSNL is also enhancing its pilot project and is going for a commercial deployment of WLL (M) in a big way.

The Big Four

Four players, Reliance, Tata, BSNL, and MTNL will push CDMA in the country. Reliance is well ahead on the front and is planning to make its Infocomm operations a success by putting a lot of focus and synergy, supported by a good deal of financial muscle.

Reliance Infocomm is being touted as the service provider that will change the face of CDMA in the country. (CDMA innovator Qualcomm is also betting heavily on Reliance, having invested around $200 million for a 4 percent equity stake.) Reliance is planning to deploy 5 million lines in more than 1,000 cities spread across 18 circles (except in J&K, A&N, and Northeast). Initially, both Nortel and Lucent were in the race but according to sources, Lucent edged an advantage over Nortel in terms of logistics as well as the capability to work in Indian conditions (read, the period when India—Pakistan tension was at its peak). According to industry sources, till date, Reliance has given CDMA infrastructure orders of around 3 million lines to Lucent Technologies. Talks for another 2 million lines are reportedly on with Samsung, Nortel, and Lucent.

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