The August issue of Voice and Data carries a feature “Up in Arms” on the VAS market. The focus of this feature is revenue share between the VAS players and service providers and how this impacts future innovations in the industry. Vijay was quoted extensively in this story on the revune share of Value Added Services in the Telecom Market and the impact of new entrants in this segment. He is also quoted on the potential and opportunities in this segment - “The true potential of this business will come to the force once operators’ new subscriber acquiring spree nears a plateau, and the focus is on the subscriber who is ready to do more with his device than just calling.” follow the link to read the article.
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
Jargon. We use it. We flaunt it. We coin it. We are daunted by it. We are bombarbed by jargon every waking minute of our lives. So being on the cutting edge does have its downsides. Or so it would seem. Until you realize that jargon can be used as a weapon also. To intimidate your poor unsuspecting colleague with whom you just had a heated discussion about the merits of n-channel MOSFETS for NAND gated SoC designs into conceeding his point. See what I just did?
Anyhoo. As I was saying. The lower transconductance and parasitic capacitance of NMOS means that the leakage currents are reduced for APR in DSM-VLSI. No really. This means nothing to me too but atleast that left you speechless.
Then, there’s the sort of lingo that actually gives you street-cred instead of just making you sound like a bookish nerd. These are the sorts of phrases that you would actually use to sound really suave at conferences and tech-mixers. Here’s a few you can feel free to use – co-creational configurations, adaptive emergence, iteration overheads. Yes, I grant permission to you to use them under the CCL. That’s the Creative Commons License, you ignoramus (that’s French for really, smart person).
So you’re probably already getting my drift and where I’m going with this. But imagine the sheer consternation of someone that isn’t used to the acronyms that are bandied about in the telecom world. Why would someone not be familar with the acronyms in the telecom world, you may well ask. Well, it could be because that someone had never had a chance to work in the telecom world. Hmmm, you say. Is that possible? It’s a long shot. But it certainly isn’t impossible. Well…this could go on for a while. But let’s just say for the sake of the argument, that there may be a few souls out there that are not cognizant of the plethora of acronyms that mobile operators use. What then? It’s for exactly such people that I have prepared the following glossary of acronyms -
ARPU – Average Revenue Per Unit , BHCA – Busy Hour Call Attempts, BS – Base Station, BSC – Base Station Controller, BTS – Base Transceiver Station, CDMA – Code Division Multiple Access, CLI – Cell Location Identification, CPP – Calling Party Pays, EDGE – Enhanced Data-rates for GPS Enhancement, GPRS – General Packet Radio Service , GSM – Global System for Mobile Communications, HLR – Home Location Register, EIR – Equipment Identification Register, IMEI – Internation Mobile Equipment Identity
Wireless networks are happening. Mobile is the present and the future. Be it First world, Second world or the third world, wireless networks are creating waves and have far surpassed the fixed networks in scale and in capacity. In India every month approximately 10 million wireless subscribers get added and total number of subscribers are arond 250 million which is one-fourth of India’s population. And what we have seen until now is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are many reasons why mobile value added segment is poised to see exponential growth. The first oen is that mobile services today account for roughly 10% of operator revenues and a big chunk of that is P2P SMS. With Voice charges hitting rock bottom the only way operators will make money is thru value added services. And this is the reason we’ll see new and innovative services every day. Second, the consumers are maturing and are becoming more sophisticated and are moving ahead of entertainment and content – they want to use their mobiles for information services and commerce which has immense potential in terms of number and value of services. Third, the 3G technology is now stable and spectrum is getting acquired by operators – soon 3G capabilities will be part of all networks and that means bandwidths of upto 10Mbps per subscriber. That kind of bandwidth turns a mobile into a computer with broadband connection and the information that can be sent on that channel is just enormous.
Investors everywhere are recognizing the potential of wireless services and are investing bigtime into companies in this space. The number of companies entering into this space is also very high and the coming years shall see some M&A activity. Being here can provide enough technical challenges to the young tech-hungry enthusiasts – and being here also means doing something which will contribute in no small way to the nation’s development.
One97 is one of the major players here and will be in the middle of all this excitement and growth. We are growing like anything and our young and dynamic team will take us to new heights. So guys and gals,if you are not already here, hop on to the bandwagon and enjoy the ride. This space is hot, and being in this space is cool.
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