Several telecom operators in India are going slow on network expansion. As a result, mobile subscribers face poor quality of services (QoS).
Telecom Capex (capital spending) of operators such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Vodafone, etc. was estimated to shoot up by 40 percent in 2013 compared to the doldrums of 2012, but Capex/sales are still low at 12 percent. “This is way below the 20 percent to be expected for a country where network roll out is still underway,” said Mohammad Chowdhury, leader, Telecom PwC India.
Strategy Analytics indicates that global telecom operators’ investment in technology infrastructure alone is not likely to improve the declining revenues and profitability facing the industry.
Strategy Analytics’ research on a sample of major network operators including Verizon, AT&T, NTT, Telefonica, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom/Orange, and BT shows deteriorating financial performance since 2007 with total revenues flat and profitability in a declining trajectory.
Convergence of broadband wireline and wireless businesses will further intensify revenue and profit pressures.
Elango T, president Operations, Mobility, Tata Docomo said that the threshold for bandwidth and high speed data connectivity has gone up in the recent time. Data is the next frontier of growth that will offset slowing voice revenues.
Tata Docomo, which recently introduced Photon Max Wi-Fi, believes that such products will help boost the data revenues. With the contribution of approximately 30 percent to total revenue, mobile data is already a substantial revenue driver for Tata Teleservices.
Select telecom equipment vendors in India shared their suggestions for optimization of network and better management.
Network Optimization
Network optimization refers to the processes and utilities that help a network administrator keep a network operating at peak efficiency. To optimize network space, maximize network investments and manage processes more efficiently, it would help to provide teams with the technical leadership and empower them with insights into best practices and the professional services, tools and techniques they would require to run networks seamlessly and intelligently.
Mobile operators who serve a rising demand for voice capacity in megacities are suffering from declining network quality. “Typically, the only option is to reduce the radio interference by lowering antenna heights and by adding new BTS sites. A new, cheaper option is to add BTS site capacity through software upgrades while maintaining consistent network quality,” said Amit Marwah, head, Technology, India Region, NSN.
The amount of interference a system can handle limits the amount of calls per frequency it can process. Better interference cancellation increases call capacity. Two recent software based radio features, Dynamic Frequency Channel Allocation (DFCA) and Orthogonal Sub-Channel (OSC) use new algorithms to push the boundaries.
Solutions can be devised to accelerate the browsing speed of large, complex web content from mobile phones, and reduce the amount of data transferred over the radio network. Saving radio capacity and costs this way will provide a classic browsing experience and a seamless and quicker flow of high-definition video content.
Furthermore, adopting optimization techniques like Liquid Application are set to redefine the role of the base station through applications, services and content placed in close proximity to mobile subscribers. These can use real-time network information to transform user experiences, said NSN’s Amit Marwah.
Smartphone driven data growth
The rise of smartphones is changing the Indian telecom landscape by fuelling the growth of data consumption. In the last year alone, India has witnessed a 52 percent increase in smartphone adoption. At the same time, industry sources estimate that the Indian mobile data traffic is expected to grow 58-fold between 2011 and 2016, with a compounded annual growth rate of 126 percent.
Consumers expect applications to run without compromising on performance. High intensity applications like video streaming on mobile devices is becoming popular – for example, more than 40 percent of all of YouTube’s traffic comes from mobile devices including tablets. Indian telecom operators are also optimistic that this increase in data consumption will help increase revenues. In a recent announcement, leading telecom operator Reliance Communications noted that data will account for around 40 percent of incremental revenue in coming years.
“This opportunity poses a challenge to telecom operators who are already facing pressures to ensure that their infrastructure is robust and able to support this growth. With the pressure set to increase with the increasing addiction to data usage, telecom operators must address coverage and capacity issues immediately,” said Pankaj Gandhi, director – Wireless, CommScope India and SAARC.
New site acquisition continues to be a major challenge for telecom operators. Overcrowded urban environments and high real estate costs have only made securing new cell sites more challenging. In this scenario, operators have added capacity to their towers; however this has its own share of limitations.
Regulations on radiation norms clubbed with site acquisition challenges will drive the adoption of small cells – the deployment of numerous smaller cell sites by either using distributed coverage solutions or in-building solutions or even small radius macro sites. This will address consumer concern around quality of service by reducing dropped calls and enhancing data speeds in dense Indian metro cities.
In 2014, telecom operators will also continue to implement solutions to generate increased capacity from existing sites within their network by containing interference and using cell sculpting techniques like multi-beam antennas.
“We have already seen twin beam antennas implemented successfully. The dual lobe approach which produces two separate 38-degree beams with centers separated by 60 degrees provides excellent coverage. This means that telecom operators can use three antennas instead of six separate one-beam antennas, saving valuable tower space,” said CommScope’s Pankaj Gandhi.
Antennas with even narrower beams can provide capacity for even the most service and capacity demanding areas like open arenas, outdoor events or high dense capacity areas. 3-beam, 5-beam and even 18-beam antennas exist with shapes that not only significantly add capacity, but also improve data throughput by increasing the gain of the antenna.
In parallel to this, operators are also looking into their backhaul requirements very closely especially with the challenges of capacity growth they face. Using the sculpting concept in microwave antennas will help operators to manage the last mile connectivity of sites, especially in densely populated areas. ETSI standards of Class-4 MW antennas define beam patterns so sharp that they are practically blind to interference from adjacent antennas. Leading operators in their pilot deployments have experienced either savings on required frequency spots in a given cluster or the reuse factor going up by approximately 40 percent with given frequency spots.
3G 4G network optimization
In 2014, operators will pay more attention to optimizing and maximizing the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). The performance of radio technologies such as 3G, LTE and LTE-Advanced is more susceptible to the amount of noise in the RF path including electronic noise. Electronic noises such as clutter, jamming signals and spurious noise and external factors such as wind, temperature changes and humidity have significant effects on the coverage of the network.
“To escape the commodity trap, network operators must become consumer-centric and focus on meeting specific functional needs as they compete for carefully targeted consumer segments. The ability to win the hearts, minds, and loyalties of specific consumer segments with innovative value propositions and meaningful brand differentiation will create significant new sources of profit and growth for those network operators who make this marketing transformation,” said Harvey Cohen, president of Strategy Analytics.
With a large part of India untouched by mobile broadband and the greater availability of cheaper smartphones and data plans, the real explosion in data consumption is all set to occur. Operators will continue to face extreme challenges on existing infrastructure while increasing penetration in rural areas. Thus, operators will look into implementing technologies and techniques that will enable them to optimize their network to cope with the growing coverage and capacity demands. This will be a key factor in ensuring quality service and thus maintaining customer retention.
