TRAI Network Audit (Mumbai & Delhi NCR)

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Obviously RJio is short of Spectrum & RCom sharing agreement is needed. MTS spectrum will also indirectly go to RJio in that case. But 700 Mhz Spectrum is like Gold. Surprising to see RJio willing to aggressively invest in that so early even while they are yet to launch.

Airtel & Vodafone claims that they need to develop their existing Spectrum base so 700 Mhz auction should be postponed. But when they bought 4G Spectrum, they were yet to utilize & develop their 3G base. But they bought it anyway. I don't know why Airtel & Vodafone has objections when RJio wanna buy 700 Mhz spectrum.
 
Airtel, Vodafone and others have objections because they don't have the money to buy 700 MHz right now. They won't have the money until a few years (1-3 years). That's why they don't want it auctioned soon.

Moreover, if RJio needed sub-1 GHz spectrum so badly, it could have bought 900 MHz spectrum instead of 1800 MHz in the last auction. It was so proud to grab 1800 MHz spectrum back then but now, after several months, says it's not good enough and it now wants 700 MHz. It's not like RJIo is the first to figure out VoLTE on 1800 MHz will be difficult; global consensus has been that 1800 Mhz is not good for VoLTE since some time. VoLTE really does need sub-1 GHz spectrum otherwise there are issues such as high call drop rate.

RJio tried to alleviate this by installing a huge number of small cells but I guess it didn't work well in testing. Small cells are not really scalable because of the infrastructure requirements, stable power and a big backhaul.

RJio can trade spectrum of both RCom and MTS and maybe even Tata to get going. CDMA is a dead end and has very low market share so operators shouldn't be too hesitant to sell off their 800 MHz spectrum and focus on their 3G networks.

The most interesting option will be a merger of RJio and RCom and then RJio will be able to do CSFB to RCom's GSM network.

National resources like spectrum shouldn't be auctioned off when only one player needs it; it should be auctioned off with a view to get the best utilisation out of it. If it is auctioned off now only RJio will be able to fully utilise it.

The device ecosystem in 700 MHz is also in its early stages and the market share of 4G phones in India which support 700 MHz band is low.
 
In my opinion, the entire Spectrum allocation is screwed in India. Telecom policies should be means for growth of industry but they have become deterrent for it. Govt is using Spectrum as milking cow which is limiting capital expenditure by companies and they're unable to utilize Spectrum resources to full potential.

Telecom market in India has become a monopoly. There is desperate need for competition for benefit of average customers.

RJio is under tremendous pressure to roll out its network. Airtel has already established 4G PAN India & Vodafone/Idea will launch next year. RJio can't hold out for too long. RJio is now more than 1 Lakh crore investment while producing 0 income.

And i don't think Small Cells are feasible LTE solutions in present Indian conditions. It takes lot of investment, time & resources to set up cells. Also there will numerous regulatory hurdles from various authorities (Municipalities, RWAs, TRAI etc etc).
 
vedantlath said:
It's a private report by a non-government company; I don't see how such a report can be published under RTI.
Click to expand...
the document is shared with trai and pmo! no harm in trying. maybe some idiot would send you a copy!
 
Can't RJIO do CA across 850 and 1800, 1800 and 2300 MHz or something like that?

If RJIO backs out, rcom is as good as dead. 😀
 
Carrier Aggregation won't solve the coverage issue on 1800 and 2300 MHz bands. They need sub-1 GHz spectrum somehow or the other.

It would be surprising if RJio doesn't do CA across all their bands. Doing CA would make them the first LTE-Advanced network in India; it would have higher speeds and a really nice edge in marketing. They will probably call it True 4G considering that only LTE-Advanced was considered 4G before marketing pressure led ITU-T to accept LTE as 4G.

Look at the huge number of CA options that Nexus 5X supports: B1-B3, B1-B5, B1-B7, B1-B8, B1-B18, B1-B19, B1-B26, B3-B3, B3-B5, B3-B7, B3-B8, B3-B19, B3-B20, B3-B28, B5-B7, B7-B7, B7-B20, B7-B28, B40-B40, B41-B41. [1] That means, among the six relevant bands auctioned in India [2], it supports CA DL in:
700-1800 MHz
850-1800 MHz
850-2100 MHz
900-1800 MHz
900-2100 MHz
1800-2100 MHz

2300 MHz hardly has any support for CA with a different band in modern handsets. So 2300 MHz is really crap from a long-term perspective. They can do CA with 700-1800 MHz and 850-1800 MHz.

Surprisingly, iPhones do not yet support CA even though they probably have the widest band support for LTE [3].

1: Nexus tech specs - Nexus Help
2: Band 1 (2100 MHz), Band 3 (1800 MHz), Band 5 (850 MHz), Band 8 (900 MHz), Band 28 (700 MHz APT) and Band 40 (TDD 2300 MHz)
3: Except for some obscure variants.
 

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