Thursday, May 12, 2005
Second tier Wireless - WLL in China and India
My second dispatch from India has been delayed. Apologies, but it appears Bangalore didn't have quite as many open Wifi networks to sponge off of as I had thought. So here I am in a cybercafe in Bangkok trying to catch up.
An email item caught my eye today which shows how differently WiLL (wireless in the local loop) is faring in India and China. The news - UT Starcom, a big provider of xiaolingtong services in China, announced big layoffs as a result of the slowing market. Xiaolingtong is roughly the equivalent of PHS in Japan or corDECT in India - inexpensive wireless in the local loop, with limited mobility.
While travelling in Bangalore and Chennai, I was struck by how much Reliance Infocomm has been advertisting its CDMA-based Fixed Wireless Phone (FWP), starting at 150 rupees rental (less than US $4) per month. Talking to folks in Bangalore, this (and fully mobile Reliance CDMA phones from LG and Samsung) has brought a whole set of new subscribers from the lower income brackets to the telecom table, and they're all Internet-ready to boot.
So though India and China were very similar just a few years ago with two types of service - GSM for high end users and limited mobility systems in corDECT/xiaolingtong for low end users - things have changed quite a bit. China's WiLL users are graduating to GSM, facilitated by the numerous GSM hardware manufacturers now in China like Bird, TCL, Haier, etc. They are also looking towards 3G in WCDMA, CDMA2000 and/or TD-SCDMA, even though no one is really asking for it. Lots of this has to do with the 3G choice directly helping the domestic handset and telecom manufacturing industry. Hence the attention paid to homegrown TD-SCDMA.
India has chosen to ignore the official 3G race for now (probably a smart move) and squeeze more out of CDMA, both for fixed wireless and for low cost mobiles from Korean manufacturers. It seems in India, corDECT still has momentum, but if Reliance's marketing push is any indication, it might take a big slice of that pie.
An email item caught my eye today which shows how differently WiLL (wireless in the local loop) is faring in India and China. The news - UT Starcom, a big provider of xiaolingtong services in China, announced big layoffs as a result of the slowing market. Xiaolingtong is roughly the equivalent of PHS in Japan or corDECT in India - inexpensive wireless in the local loop, with limited mobility.
While travelling in Bangalore and Chennai, I was struck by how much Reliance Infocomm has been advertisting its CDMA-based Fixed Wireless Phone (FWP), starting at 150 rupees rental (less than US $4) per month. Talking to folks in Bangalore, this (and fully mobile Reliance CDMA phones from LG and Samsung) has brought a whole set of new subscribers from the lower income brackets to the telecom table, and they're all Internet-ready to boot.
So though India and China were very similar just a few years ago with two types of service - GSM for high end users and limited mobility systems in corDECT/xiaolingtong for low end users - things have changed quite a bit. China's WiLL users are graduating to GSM, facilitated by the numerous GSM hardware manufacturers now in China like Bird, TCL, Haier, etc. They are also looking towards 3G in WCDMA, CDMA2000 and/or TD-SCDMA, even though no one is really asking for it. Lots of this has to do with the 3G choice directly helping the domestic handset and telecom manufacturing industry. Hence the attention paid to homegrown TD-SCDMA.
India has chosen to ignore the official 3G race for now (probably a smart move) and squeeze more out of CDMA, both for fixed wireless and for low cost mobiles from Korean manufacturers. It seems in India, corDECT still has momentum, but if Reliance's marketing push is any indication, it might take a big slice of that pie.
