Of 700 MHz and other warm, fuzzy creatures…

So for those of you that I have had the pleasure of sharing and exchanging ideas with, you would know that I spent most of my professional life in a land far, far away. However, I have had a hard time explaining to my colleagues in India that there really is no such thing as VAS in the US of A. VAS in India is a multi-billion dollar industry and it makes sense for operators (carriers) in any economy to find ways to increase penetration, increase usage, and thereby increase returns by providing value to the consumer. But the cellphone industry in the US is a much more tightly controlled and closed market as compared to Asia or Europe. See link

Part of the reason is that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has stifled innovation in the market with its regulations and the carriers have had to resort to lock-in practices such as locked handsets, long-term contracts, and steep termination fees in order to protect their interests. Vendor lock-in is anti-competitive and number portability is no sort of panacea for the these anti-competitive practices.

It is hard for me to explain to colleagues that there is no such thing as CRBT (Custom Ring Back Tone) in the U.S. You only hear a tring-tring when you call your friend. There’s no such thing as SMS Banking alerts. A2P SMS on CDMA networks happens over HTTP (i.e. the SMS travels as an e-mail before landing on your phone). Short codes (although available) are non-pervasive to the point of being non-prevalent.

So what do we have so far? We have a whole economy which has an over-capacity of under-utlized 2.5 G networks. We have an economy which will probably not move to 3G anytime soon. Even though the FCC has auctioned off the 700 MHz spectrum, Ma Bell’s kids will try to protect its turf and lobby for regulations to kill new entrants in the market. AT&T and Verizon have cornered most of the 700 MHz band spectrum and Google has managed to push for open access, i.e. letting any device use the spectrum. not just the ones that the carriers make you buy. What does this mean? It means that Android phones are going to become prevalent.

Here’s a link that explains the 700 MHz dealio -link

- Arunabh Das

| Category: Ideas and Discussions |