Telecom Update: Airtel is Ahead of the Curve, PSTN to All-IP Upgrade

When the commercial launch of Jio was announced with a bang, it basically hit all mobile operators of India. Big three of Indian telecom - A-Vo-Id will be hit severely in coming days. However right now Airtel is in the best position among them to fight back to Jio.

1. Pan India LTE presence & 2300MHz in 17 circles 

Airtel has 20MHz x 2300MHz spectrum in 17 circles and in all circles they have complimentary 1800MHz spectrum for LTE roll out.

Vodafone & Idea have no spectrum in 2300MHz and they are rolling out LTE/4G on just 5MHz of 1800MHz band.

2. Airtel will spend less on spectrum in future

With this much of spectrum bank, Airtel will have to spend less in near future to buy out spectrum.

In the upcoming spectrum auction in October this year Vodafone & Idea will shell out money to buy the LTE compatible spectrum. Also they will have to spend a huge to roll out LTE, while Airtel has better LTE coverage than the duo.

3. LTE-A by Airtel 

To counter act Jio, Airtel has launched faster LTE Advanced in Mumbai & Bengaluru which can offer upto 135Mbps downlink. LTE-A is actually a software upgrade for carrier aggregation - 20MHz 2300MHz + 5MHz 1800MHz.

While Vodafone and Idea are away from such things for atleast 1 year. They have to acquire more spectrum in upcoming auction and then they have to deploy the technology and then only they can offer such things.

For Jio carrier aggregation would be easier - they have LTE over 2300/1800/850MHz already and just a click they will begin offering LTE-A in all circles.

PSTN to All-IP Upgrade becomes a Reality

Nokia and Orange Polska had a succesful pilot project to migrate 4,000 subscribers on legacy public switched telephone network (PSTN) to all-IP unified network in a suburban area of Warsaw using Nokia’s PSTN Smart Transform solution. As the officials said, the migration will help to support current and future broadband needs as well as IP-based voice services and significant operational benefits including energy savings and real estate optimization.

This may be helpful for BSNL who is struggling across the country on all turfs - be it landline, wired broadband, or mobile voice & data.