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There have been enough indications from the government to clear the air around the 3G policy soon, deployment may realize some momentum. Wide-scale adoption of other complementary technologies like Wi-Fi and WiMAX may happen in parallel.
3G services if all goes are likely to be introduced from the second half of 2007, and the process of its entry in India has already started, with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) framing the last recommendations for 3G services. Bharti, Airtel, Tata Teleservices, and Reliance Infocomm have expressed their interest in 3G by applying for additional spectrum and rolling out networks and mobile devices for 3G.
In India, most of the operators offer both Fixed Line and Wireless services and might look to deploy unified services to users. Full fledged adoption of FMC also depends on data bandwidth the user receives through cellular network.
Trends to be seen in FMC deployment in India
FMC is at a early stage in the Asia Pacific and even nascent in India so there have not have been any trends to speak of. Akshay Agarwal, Ecosystem Partner Manager - India & Korea, Texas Instruments, India forecasts that service providers in India may start with Pre-IMS, skip UMA and may jump to IMS directly. Akshay add they feel would be too early to comment at this point since successful adoption of FMC also depends on deployment of 3G and Wi-Fi. Pre-IMS services could mainly be applications like Instant Messaging and Photo Sharing.
The contribution of value added services (VAS) is increasing steadily and is expected to form a major portion of FMC revenues in the near future. Even as the FMC services market gains traction, the go-tomarket strategy of service providers should be to provide a variety of FMC compliant dual mode handsets to customers.
Indian Telcos are still focused on meeting the high demand for basic voice but gradually opening up to generating demand for converged service offerings.
Rising income, declined handset prices, and increased awareness of vailable mobile services among masses has led to the growing adoption of mobility solutions. The major areas of growth will be the youth segment and the rural areas.
FMC, the magical solution
Not only is FMC the solution to provide rich media services to the end customer, it also Fixed Mobile Convergence provides both the fixed and the mobile operators a magical solution to not only provide high end services to subscribers but entails the convergence of access networks and help them integrate their forces to tap the huge potential of the rural India. The telecom network in the country are not so intensive as in developed country and teledensity is low particularly in the rural areas.
But India has lots of advantages,. 670,000 route kilometers of optical fibres has been laid in India by operators, even in interior areas and the process continues. BSNL alone, has laid optical fibre to 30,000 out of their 35,000 exchanges, thus having a fibre connection down to an average of 20 villages. Keeping in mind the vailbility of providing services in rural areas, an attractive solution appears to be FMC.
© CIOL Bureau
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