/vnd/media/agency_attachments/bGjnvN2ncYDdhj74yP9p.png)
A new standard, Personal Handiphone System (PHS), made a quiet entry on India’s
wireless service horizon a month ago when Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL)
launched what it calls extended cordless service (ECS). Launched in a few South
Delhi pockets, the service is deployed on UTStarcom’s Personal Access System
(PAS) wireless access platform.
Subscribers availing of the cordless service can make voice calls in their
area using sleek, compact and lightweight cordless phones. MTNL is also offering
fixed wireless terminals (FWTs) on PAS. Currently, there are around 800
subscribers of the service with 500 using FWTs, and the rest using mobile
handsets. Over the next five months, MTNL would be taking this service to around
5,000 customers in South Delhi and to a couple of other areas in the metro.
So is this new PHS-based service going to be the third dimension to the
ongoing GSM-CDMA turf war or simply another technology option for an operator
trying to reach out to more people? As of now, it appears to be the latter. MTNL
does not seem to have an intention to position ECS as a separate wireless
service and position it against CDMA or GSM. It appears to be experimenting with
PAS with the sole objective of reaching out to customers in congested and what
it defines technically non-feasible (TNF) areas and compliment its fixed
services. It is because of this that the service has been priced at the existing
MTNL fixed service tariff, with only Rs 75 being charged extra for the cordless
facility. "Laying cables is becoming increasingly difficult and costly, so
we have always been trying various wireless options, and PAS is the latest
addition to that process," PK Saha, general manager, MTNL, Delhi, says.
MTNL also seems to have been guided by the fact that PAS is a modular and
scalable technology and an operator can keep adding capacity as the demand
grows. Saha informs that depending on the feedback that the service gets from
users, MTNL may decide to go beyond the current experiment.
MTNL has deployed FWT CDMA and CorDECT in some parts of Delhi and Mumbai.
It also offers a CDMA-based limited mobility service under the brand name
Garuda and GSM-based cellular service Dolphin in both the metros.
While MTNL’s ECS is offering voice service only, PAS offers other
possibilities too.
In China, where more than 10 million lines have been deployed on PAS till
date, it is being successfully used to offer a broad suite of data services,
including SMS, e-mail, information services and mobile Internet access at 32 and
64 kbps. The solution can also be used to offer direct Internet access through
multimedia mobile phones.
Allowing service providers to leverage their existing infrastructure, PAS is
being touted as an effective technology for increasing teledensity in countries
like China and India, which have low teledensity. "PAS is not only
considerably cheaper than other wireless and wireline access platforms, it also
allows for the provisioning of the same suite of services as offered by
competing technology platforms and more," claims Ruchir Godura, director,
South Asia, UTStarcom. The company claims PAS to be 35 percent cheaper than 3G
1X. Fixed line operators just need to invest in a network interface unit also
called remote wireless terminal and PAS radio system. It is estimated that an
operator would need to invest around a crore of rupees for offering voice and
data services per 2,000 subscribers. While this may sound expensive for a green
field operator, for an incumbent it would be a cost-effective option, as it
would allow it to leverage its existing infrastructure to offer new services.
This also means that the operator can offer mobility services to its
customers without much capex unlike in CDMA where one would need to put in place
a complete set of new infrastructure in place. This is because most of the CDMA
deployments in the country are only enabled for voice. In case an operator wants
to offer data services, he will have to invest in a parallel data network.
There is no doubt that PAS has tremendous advantages for a fixed service
operator looking at new revenue streams by leveraging its existing
infrastructure. However, the future of PAS in India will largely depend on what
course the CDMA limited mobility issue takes. If the fixed service operators are
allowed to offer limited mobility services, very few are likely to invest in PHS
and by extension PAS as unlike CDMA, PHS is a micro-cellular technology. In
fact, MTNL too is waiting for a final decision on the CDMA issue and calls its
current indulgence with PAS just an experiment.