Sunday, September 13, 2009

Golden Duck and 3G

Let me tell you a story, Long long ago there was a duck which gave 1 golden egg each day to the owner. Days passed, each day the story repated and owner got one golden egg per day. But our owner was not satisfied- he want to become rich very fast. The speed of golden egg coming out of duck was too slow fo him. So he thought about other ways to increase the speed. Finally he decided to kill the duck and took all the eggs at once!!! He killed the duck and tore open the stomach. Alas!!! all he got was some small eggs!!!Now the duck gone , golden egg too.

I don't know whether the same story will be repeated with the Indian government. As the technology is advancing day by day; instruments too follow te suit and we start to call it in terms of generations. Like 4th generation fighter plance, 5th generation fighter plance etc.

The same case is applicable for mobile technologies too. 2nd gen, 3rd gen, 4th gen etc. And just like any other part in the world in India too Government allocates the spectrum to mobile service providers. And now almost in every week or month we are hearing about this 3G, 3G spctrum auctioning etc. But they postpone it too much. See the Reuters report

"The auction, which will introduce high-speed Internet and video downloads
on mobile phones, was originally planned for January 2009 but was delayed after
the finance ministry wanted the reserve price to be doubled. Last month, the
base price for pan-India 3G spectrum was revised by a ministerial panel to 35
billion rupees ($722 million) from 20.20 billion rupees."


And now it is decided that government will start the auctioning spectrum for private companies from Dec 7 onwards. Source : telecom department website. Will they start from Dec 7? most probably.

The problem here is that in search for more and more revenue from auction government may loose it at all. Look at the technological side, its always moving forward and its already entering in to 4G stage. Various companies like NTTDocomo are testing 4G. 4G technology is excellent it supports HDTV, Vedio chat, Mobile TV, wireless broadband, DVB etc. NTTDocomo achived a maximum ransfer of 5GB/s in the downlink using 100MHz freequency bandwidth while moving at a speed of 10km/hour.

Digiweb got a license from Irish tlecom tegulator. Verizon announced in sep 2007 about their plans to change its network to 4G standard LTE. In dec 2008 they announced their intend to rollout LTE network by the end of 2009. This is the same time India government decided to launch 3G auction. In Canada Telus and Bell Canada are looking for 4G rollout. Sprint aleady announced its 3G/4G connection plan for 79.99$. Caribbean telecom companies too are keen on investing 4G technology.

Now look at India's situation we already differed the date as far as possible. If we differed even further then there may not be any need for 3G auction. Government can directly go for 4G auction and this 35 bn rupes will go forever. On the other case suppose government succeed in getting this much money even then we are the losers.

Because this will delay the 4G rollout as companies can't invest huge sum of money again for 4G. Evenif they want they have to upgrade their infrastructure for 4G. Again investment neded. if they invested huge sums for 3G auction do you think will they do it again for 4G auction+ infrastructure so soon? So ultimately who is the loser? public only , because most probably the 4G auction will be delayed.

So please use the golden duck in a sustainable manner.

Sajeev

2 comments:

  1. very nice brother. nice written

    satin jain

    ReplyDelete
  2. More delays... Now its a wait and watch game. What will happen first?
    Issuing of 3G Spectrum or
    Commercial availability of 4G phones?

    ReplyDelete