Sell Potential

Natural
disasters are inevitable. However, citizens can certainly be alerted in the wake
of any impending disaster-be it natural or man-made-to prevent its worst impact.
There are proven technologies available to send messages reliably to citizens.
Most governments across the world-including the US, Japan, South Korea, and even
our neighbor Sri Lanka-already have an elaborate early warning system. Others
are creating new ones with the use of advanced communication technologies for
early warning.

India, with over 110 crore population, has experienced the
worst of all kinds of natural and man-made disasters-tsunami, earthquakes,
cyclones, floods, bomb blasts, terrorist attacks, poisonous gas leakages, etc.
Doesn't India require a reliable, early warning system to alert citizens and
avert the worst impact of such disasters on lives, properties, and health?
Certainly it does, and for introducing such an early warning system, cell
broadcast (CB) technology is the foremost important option.

If detecting disasters before they create mayhem and cause
worst impact is the first step, sending reliable early warning messages in
advance or on real-time basis is the next important step in an efficient
disaster management. This is where the cell broadcast center (CBC), with its
dedicated bandwidth, helps the government entities like National Disaster
Management Authority (NDMA) as well as NGOs to send emergency alerts to citizens
to prepare themselves.

Reliability as the Key

CB transmits early warning messages and other emergency information with a
100% guarantee of message delivery to alert citizens in an affected area within
a maximum time of two minutes-regardless of the size of the area or the
subscriber's telecom operator. In the current scenario, SMSes are not a reliable
source as they sometimes get delivered late, or do not get delivered during
festive seasons or during the peak talktime hours.

CB is an integrated open system that allows disaster
management officials to transmit early warning messages to citizens' mobile
phones. In cell broadcasting, the technology facilitates to push out a single
text or binary message to multiple mobile phones within an entire 'cell area'
without any lag time. Unlike in SMS-which poses problems of lag times and
network congestion-the dedicated bandwidth of the CB technology ensures reliable
delivery of warning messages immediately.

CB, which was originally designed to offer location based
services, is a standard feature on GSM networks as well as IS95 CDMA. Praveen
Nallapothula, CEO, TeleDNA Communications says, "CB technology is a one-to-many
broadcast service as opposed to SMS which is a one-to-one service. In order to
send information using CB, you do not require mobile numbers; rather, you choose
a geography and send information which will reach all mobiles in that geography.
This is like a radio or TV broadcast-the information or content is available in
different channels all the time; however, only those subscribers who can
subscribe and tune to this channel can see the content."

TeleDNA has developed a CB system that is capable of
offering advanced features like integrated geographical information system,
local as well geo-redundant systems for high availability, and various
interfaces toward external applications. TeleDNA cell broadcast center has been
working with different infrastructure vendor equipments like Ericsson, Huawei,
Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia-Siemens, etc, which require a lot of effort to integrate
and test. It is a carrier grade platform that interfaces with the mobile network
elements such as BSCs, RNC, MSC over standard interfaces (3GPP or 3GPP2). The
platform can scale from 1 TPS to 2,000 TPS. With in-built GIS server, TeleDNA CB
allows system users to easily define a geographical area on the fly and
broadcast messages.

Debasis Chatterji, CEO, Netxcell says, "While SMSes are
sent from a mobile to another mobile, cell broadcast messages are sent from
mobile or a system to all mobiles under a cell circle or a tower circle.
Broadcast messages can reach all mobiles under a tower or the entire country in
a matter of seconds. In a cellular network 64,000 broadcast channels are
possible, thereby enabling many services that use the basic broadcast
technology." He further says, "The technology is used for getting economical and
political updates. It can also be used by communities for discussions on sports,
movies, etc. Apart from this, the technology can potentially be used for
classifieds to sell or buy anything. Currently, Prasar Bharti (Doordarshan) uses
CB to send information on vaccinations, public welfare activities." Netxcell
offers a Cell Broadcast Center, designed for the creation and simultaneous
delivery of CB messages to multiple users of mobile networks

CB messages can be broadcast across the entire network
coverage area or within specific segments or cells. The system can function in
GSM and UMTS. Apart from emergency broadcast messages, CB technology can be used
much more efficiently than the existing SMS technology for sending subscription
based infotainment and entertainment messages. Different channels can be created
for different types of content, just like in TV, and let subscribers tune in to
view that information. CB technology can also play a crucial role in
geographical advertisement applications.

Gaining Momentum

Nallapothula says, "CB technology usage is still at nascent stages in most
developed countries. However, they are viewing CB worldwide as a valuable
emergency notification tool, since disaster preparedness and recovery cost
billions of dollars annually to countries around the globe. In a recent study
comparing public warning systems, it was shown that cell broadcast was the most
valuable tool for emergency warnings." The US government has already implemented
early warning system based on CB technology and it is proving to be very
reliable and efficient in sending early warnings. In many markets, CB technology
has not been used for any commercial applications; while is a few countries, it
is being used for broadcasting emergency messages to the masses like flood
warnings, traffic forecasts, missing kids information, etc, by public safety
agencies.

Recently, the US Parliament passed a WARN Act in which CB
technology has been selected for emergency communication with public like
presidential alerts, etc. In fact, one of the acts recently passed in the US
encourages carriers to participate in the government emergency warnings sent out
to cell phones. In the recent years, South Korea and Japan launched the first
nationwide system. Customers of Japan's NTT DOCOMO, for instance, can opt for a
free offering called Area Mail Disaster Information Service. The United Nations
and the World Health Organization are working on deploying this technology to
keep pace with global communications initiatives. International
Telecommunications Union and other international governing bodies are already
developing global harmonization standards for emergency cell broadcast warnings.
Apart from the US, Japan, and South Korea, our neighbor Sri Lanka has also
introduced an early warning system based on CB technology in January 2009.
Maldives and many other governments across the world are actively considering
the use of this technology for a reliable, early warning system. In Africa, CB
is used for social service messaging, while in Israel it is used for
merchandising.

CB technology can also play a crucial role in geographical
advertisement applications as it is geo scalable and geo-specific. The Dutch
Government has done a series of trials with CB as a media channel for
communication with citizens in cases of emergency. The EU project, CHORIST, for
public warning has recently given a proof of concept demonstration and
presentation at the Catalonia Civil Protection Center in Barcelona to a broad
audience of selected European authorities.

Market Potential

As the technology has a very big revenue potential for all stakeholders,
India will see a variety of commercial applications along with emergency
applications being launched by the end of 2010. It can be an additional revenue
stream for operators who are already facing the decline of ARPU in mobile
services revenue. Nallapothula says, "Operators and VAS players can look at
using CB as a medium to open and offer a wide variety of innovative services to
all subscribers in a network, instantly and based on location, all without
jeopardising subscribers' privacy or overloading the network. Typical examples
would be pay-per-click geographical advertisements, flash news alerts,
promotional messages, and more importantly some emergency communication
messages."

In its basic form, CB is relatively less expensive, simple
to deploy and requires little bandwidth to broadcast messages. Recent evidence
suggests that successful business models can be developed for CB, which means
interest in CB as a launch pad for profitable commercial services may re-awaken.
The successful services, however, would be based on interactive models rather
than simple, one-way cell broadcast. This also depends on how innovatively
subscribers are allowed to opt for selected broadcast channels without
bombarding them with some unwanted data. Chatterji says, "India's private radio
broadcasting industry exhibits a strong growth potential. Radio broadcasting
revenues are growing at 29% per annum. Growth in this sector is being propelled
by the increasing listener base, favorable demographics, opportunities in phase
III expansion, political advertising, increasing advertising by small local
brands, and introduction of new performance measurement tools."

Viable Model Eluding?

For any technology to be successfully deployed, the ecosystem should find a
viable revenue model. According to Nallapothula of TeleDNA, "One of the biggest
stumbling blocks for CB has been finding a viable business model. Even in other
countries, its nature as a broadcast medium has made it difficult to work out
ways of squeezing revenue out of users, since information is sent out in a
blanket fashion without registering to whom it is delivered. In some countries,
classified services have been introduced by getting users to generate and pay
for their own content. The carrier had to come up with its own solution to allow
users to broadcast messages by simply sending an SMS. Countries like South Korea
and Japan are using CB to promote video streaming services to millions of
subscribers."

CB as a technology provides significant opportunity to
operators in terms of differentiation, segmentation and revenue. Major part of
the location applications could be implemented with little investment. Network
operators can look at a small portion of fee that can be collected from the
subscribers and also location based advertisements which can be potential
revenue models. Chatterji observes that the revenue models differ from country
to country, since it all depends on the number of towers and the number of
subscribers.

For instance, India can leverage on the number of
subscribers and on towers since we are concentrated and numbers speak in our
case which is reflective of managed services and revenue sharing kind of
business models that exist. Whereas, Africa is more spread out in terms of base
transceiver station (BTS) whereby, the number of BTS are more than the
population concentration; therefore minimum guarantee plus revenue sharing might
work there. VAS players feel that the revenue sharing model, wherein VAS
companies are paid more than 50% is to be considered in India, unlike the
traditional means wherein VAS companies are paid as low as 5% in some cases.
Most European and Asian companies have revenue sharing against favoring the VAS
companies.

Kannan K

kannan@cybermedia.co.in