Several Asian countries are ahead of India in 4G / LTE rollouts. Indian telecom regulator TRAI is still considering draft paper on
LTE. Several telecom operators who got BWA spectrum last year is also delaying
their TD-LTE launch as there is no strong eco-system in place.
Five operators in Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines,
Singapore and South Korea have commercially deployed LTE, according to Ovum
telco strategy analyst, Nicole McCormick
Reliance Communications, BSNL, Airtel, Aircel, Tata
Teleservices are the leading operators who are keen to plunge into the LTE
bandwagon.
In 3G as well, India was behind many Asia nations. Delay in launching LTE service will reduce our scope to achieve our goal of broadband penetration.
For people in Finland, internet is the birthright. In India, the government is not ready to invest in broadband infrastructure. In the UK, the government is pushing for broadband revolution. The US administration is pushing for the broadband expansion.
In Asia, South Korean operators SK Telecom and LG U+, the
largest and smallest of three operators in the market, are the latest operators
to debut LTE services on July 1, 2011. Like Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, which
launched its LTE platform in December 24, 2010, both Korean operators have
moved from all-you-can-eat ‘unlimited’ pricing to capped data plans for LTE.
Operators are abolishing unlimited pricing models in the
expected video-intensive LTE world. Operators should be careful not to repeat
the mistakes of some 3G operators who overburdened their networks due to
unlimited pricing.
While LTE delivers video more efficiently than 3G,
operators offering flat rates for LTE could quickly overstretch their LTE
networks and find themselves having to invest more than expected to alleviate
this congestion,” said McCormick.
Hong Kong operator CSL is offering unlimited data for
LTE, but excessive data usage is throttled. In Singapore, M1 is offering
free LTE modems to enterprise customers on an existing plan that also has no
limit on data usage.
The telecom industry is finding a lack of innovation from
these LTE first-mover operators in packaging and pricing LTE tariffs for blue-chip
customers.
By TelecomLead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
