CELLULAR NETWORKS: Quality Takes Center-stage

This New Year began on an ominous note for cellphone subscribers in the
country, especially in the metros. As the clock struck 12, hordes of complaints
came pouring in about calls and SMS messages not getting through. The general
response from operators was that the traffic had exceeded the capacity of the
network. Blame it on the technology?

Six long years have elapsed since cellular services started in India with the
laying of the GSM network in metros. It has grown big enough now to comprise
circles that reach out to several nooks and crannies in the country. The
subscriber base stood as big as about 5.5 million on 31 December, 2001. But the
only major success (apart from voice) that operators have been able to taste
since the introduction of services is in terms of the short messaging services
revenues. In fact, the huge popularity of SMS came as a breather for them after
the WAP misadventure and a jinxed launch of GPRS services. Wireless Internet is
yet to get wide acceptability due to the technological gaps and the unprepared
state of Indian consumers.

With the allotment of the license for the fourth operator and gradual
introduction of cellular services by the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam
Limited, the focus is shifting from luring customers through low tariffs and
free airtime to more critical issues which were hitherto not considered
important by operators due to lack of competition. The operators are now talking
about improved network quality, innovative services, data enabling the network,
coverage, more value-added services, and addressing security-related issues.

Quality Is the Key

The introduction of a new range of services has necessitated the scaling of
networks and has put a lot of pressure on cellular service providers, who have
warranted a review of the network quality to maintain quality-of-service.
Inadequate coverage, quality of voice and call drops are some of the issues that
have made technologists at all cellular companies take a fresh look at the
network quality. Operators are now concentrating more on mobile network planning
and design to expand network and operations capacity, reduce costs, and improve
performance, and new service creations. This has become important to ensure that
performance, quality and robustness of network withstands any exigencies.

According to Naresh Gupta, chief technical officer, Essar Cellphone,
"The victor will be the one who can provide the best network because
long-term sustainability of service providers will depend to a great extent on
the network quality. Therefore, there is no choice other than to provide the
right technology at the right price. The service provider has to make sure that
he is with the time and deploy the best technology that is available in the
market at a price which he can provide to the consumers."

Anil Tandan, vice-president (network services), Birla Tata AT&T, adds,
"Network quality and customer interaction applications are two crucial
component of assuring a good quality of service." Shankar Haldar, CTO,
Escotel Mobile, feels that major chunk of investment by operators will be in
expansion of the network which, in turn, will addresses network quality.

Services Still a Far Cry

Short messaging services remain the only visible success story the Indian
cellular operators have so far had in terms of data services. WAP was launched
with much enthusiasm but failed miserably to take off. Explaining the real
reason behind the failure of WAP in India, Gupta says, "Technology alone
does not become a factor for the success or failure of a service. Some of the
reasons that are attributed for the success of a new products were not there,
namely, content, price, market readiness, alternative means of similar service
and applications." Gupta adds that WAP-enabled phones that came in the
market were costly, speeds were pathetic and the killer applications were not
there, besides the fact that Indian market was still in infancy. He says,
"We forgot that WAP is a circuit-switched technology and the cities, which
were the major areas for the introduction of WAP, did not have enough
spectrum."

According to Haldar, however, "Success of WAP has been far less than it
was expected all across the world. One of the major reasons for its failure has
been not being able to gauge the requirement of customers. We mistook WAP to be
an application. WAP was a technology enabler to integrate the Internet with
mobility." But he is optimistic about its future, "Probably it will be
more attractive when high data speed services like GPRS are introduced."

Haldar is also of the view that voice will remain the main driver for traffic
for a minimum of next 12 months and opines that the success of data services
will depend on three main factors, namely simplicity, reliability and speed of
services.

Killer Applications

Mobile Internet capabilities of GPRS, UMS, and location-based services are
yet to become a reality even after six years of cellular operations in India.
BPL launched its much touted GPRS services this month after a series of
postponements, which highlighted huge technological gaps that existed. This also
brings into picture the level of readiness of cellular operators and the undue
haste that they display in trying to be the first in the market.

According to Gupta, "Operators are making great progress in realizing
that more and more contents need to be developed and provided to users and are
tying up with content and application developers." Haldar accepts that
application gaps exists in India, and says, "It is true that there are not
many killer applications, which can be identified easily. But there can be some
applications that are built to meet the needs of our customers. Therefore, it is
imperative to understand the needs of different customer segments and then
provide the customized application for each segment."

Talking about Escotel’s plans, he says, "We are in the final stage of
deploying data services based on a platform that will enable us to roll out
transaction-based services in an extremely secured environment. This will
empower our customers with ease-of-use and speed by virtue of powerful
browser." Both Escotel and Essar have plans to deploy GPRS later this year.

Already, some companies are trying to live up to cellular operators’
increasing demand of more applications. These companies have come out with some
innovative products, some of which have actually been deployed by some
operators. Some of these companies include Lifetree, Jatayu, Trigyn, Ways, and E
capital. But the state of application development in India is yet to take off in
the way it should have been. Security Concerns

Mobile commerce has not really taken off in India and the security of
transaction remains the prime concern of consumers in India as elsewhere in the
world. So who is responsible? Haldar tries to answer the question thus:
"While we extend our e-commerce applications to mobile networks, security
will play an extremely crucial role. But security will generally be provided by
applications and not really so much by the mobile network except the GSM-specified
security functionalities." But the fact remains that mobile operators are
responsible for the security of transaction and not the application developers
who sell these systems to operators. So it is ultimately up to the operators to
ensure that applications that networks deployed are secure."

Striving for QoS

All these things boils down to the quality of service that will be available
to end consumers. Managing the delivery of more value-added services to
consumers remains the crux. TRAI is reported to have hired experts to look into
the network quality of operators to find out the level of quality-of-service
that is currently being offered. According to Anil Tandon of BATATA, "The
weakest link in the end-to-end delivery of quality service is the interconnect
regime."

According to Haldar, "The quality-of-service that has been provided by
cellular operators entirely depends on the standard followed by each of them.
Although there are international benchmarks for certain quality parameters but
it is the responsibility of each operator to adhere to standards." He does
not think that there is a technological reason for non-conformance. According to
him, such things can be managed by the required expansion of the network, with
high-quality radio planning team, tools and performance monitoring system in
place. For example, some operators keep track of the network quality standard on
a regular basis by improving coverage, quality and capacity on an
as-and-when-required basis. Also, in Haldar’s opinion, "It is simpler to
manage in-house expertise on network planning, optimization and powerful network
monitoring system. Quality improvement is actually part of the overall Six Sigma
initiative, at our company."

The good news is that cellular operators are now waking up to the need to
overcome some of their shortcomings and fill the technological gaps that
currently exist to serve their customers in a better way.

Sudesh Prasad

GPRS and WAP: Emerging Facts

WAP

• Content, price, market readiness, alternative means
  of similar service and applications were not in place

• WAP-enabled phones that came in the market were
  costly, the speeds were pathetic and the killer applications were not
  there. The Indian market was still in infancy.

• WAP is a circuit switched technology and the
  cities, which were the major areas for the introduction of WAP, did not
  have enough spectrum. It is not the constraint of WAP, it was the
  implementation of it which went awry."

• Failure to gauge the requirement of customers.

• WAP was mistook as an application. WAP was a
  technology enabler to integrate Internet with mobility

GPRS

• The handset manufacturers could not keep pace with
  the platform suppliers. The handset suppliers were lagging behind by six
  months to a year, because these handsets had to be GPRS enabled having
  the right coding schemes and the right price.

• The SMG (Special Mobile Group), a working group of
  ETSI the European body for Telecommunication Standards, agreed to
  develop the software on SMG 31 compliant, whereas the initial systems
  that were provided by Motorola was SMG 29 compliant and the handset
  manufacturers went for SMG 31.

• There was a disconnect in the software
  compatibility between the platforms. Initially the race was who comes
  first. Motorola came out with SMG 29 compliant product while other
  players chose to wait for SMG 31.

• Huge expectation was always built up from the
  theoretical capability of any technology like GPRS but ground reality
  comes to be different. In GPRS also claimed data speed was 170 kbps but
  the available data speed is far less than that.

• In the next 9-12 months, it is expected that many
  more GPRS Core Network would be rolled out by the operators and handsets
  availability will also grow significantly.

• GPRS roaming or support from billing system has also been an issue
  for this slow take off.