5 Roadblocks for Jio to Win over Incumbents

Jio, the digital platform from the house of Reliance Industries has shaken the Indian telecom and digital scenario in a way which nobody can ignore. India’s business tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s ambitious greenfield telecom project Jio is being targeted as a digital platform over Jio’s own LTE network expanding over 2300MHz, 1800MHz and 850MHz.

However Jio’s datagiri sees roadblocks in many ways, so that the company has to extend its unlimited offerings for another 3 months til 31st of March, 2017.

Voice Network Yet to be Stable

Unlike existing players who depend on 2G/3G networks for voice calls Jio offers voice over LTE network. Though technically Jio’s VoLTE is better than traditional voice network there are many glitches which are experienced by subscribers of Jio. Jio did a great job to open up the interconnectivity between other operators after a fight but that’s not enough.

For example I often can’t make calls when data connectivity is on, I need to switch off data before making the call. Sometimes there is no sound during a call.

Being voice is the major applications on a telecom network, nobody would make Jio as their primary connection, rather use others who have stable voice network.

Indian Rail's UTS App for Suburban Ticket Booking

Indian Rail has introduced a new app - UTS for suburabn ticket booking. I found it immensely helpful.

However few days back I found that I could not log in to buy a ticket. Instead I am getting this message:

Please Login using registered Handset or give Handset Change Request from website www.utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in

Though I did not change my mobile, the error occured. The issue is solved after logging in to that mentioned website and requesting handset change option.

But there is a catch, the process did not work on mobile, I had to open that link on laptop and log in to do so. 

[Press Release] Now Donate Digitally with FreeCharge

Akshaya Patra, MagicBus tie-up with FreeCharge in the Season of Joy

Donors and NGOs go cashless to continue their support

National, December 02, 2016:  It is the season to share the joy and spread some smiles. It is also the time when the cold weather in parts of the country makes life harder for the under-privileged. The demonetization move has suddenly impacted the ability of NGOs to receive contributions from willing donors. 

In such times, FreeCharge, India’s fastest growing digital payments platform, is doing its bit to help create digital donations bridges through its app. In a recently launched feature, it now has a “Donate” button on its app, through which FreeCharge users can make instant donations to leading NGOs in the country. The Akshaya Patra Foundation; Magic Bus India Foundation; GiveIndia powered - Maitri India, Foundation for Mother and Child Health, Abhoy Mission; other NGOs and Nizamuddin Dargah are already live on FreeCharge. Many more NGOs catering to the causes such as children’s education, mother and child care, care for the elderly will get added over the next few weeks.

Commenting on FreeCharge’s donations category, Mr. Govind Rajan, CEO, FreeCharge said, “Our users had reached out to us expressing their desire to be able to donate through FreeCharge. Volunteers in our product and technology team worked to roll out this feature quickly. Use of digital wallets for nonprofit contributions is a great idea that helps users stay connected with the causes they care for, in a seamless manner. In the past few days, hundreds of users have connected with us requesting to add NGOs of their choice and we are in the process of making that happen.”

Indian Rural LTE Will Come via 850MHz As of Now!

Few days back I visited Harit, a village nearly 60km away from Kolkata. To my surprise this area does not have any JIO network even LTE850 is also absent there.

My perception was JIO have covered majority of Indian landscape but that's not true. There is another thing (it needs to be verified) JIO is yet launch its LTE850 network with RCom's spectrum.

However my point is India's wireless digital life program needs sub-1GHz spectrum for the better indoor coverage, wider outdoor coverage and less CAPEX expenditure for all these.

Worldwide LTE-FDD deployment on 700MHz is considered to be a global roaming enabler and at the same time it can transform the rural telecommunications by covering the white spots.

However in India the situation is different - here 2G services are also weak at places, 3G network is expanding slower than expected and don't ask about 4G (though Jio's legacy 4G-only network breaks that myth and it has quite better coverage than other operators' 2G/3G network). Debt ridden operators in India skipped the 700MHz spectrum auction recently citing the financial reason.

So as of now India's rural wireless broadband will be depending on 850/900MHz LTE roll out, while LTE900 is yet to come and LTE850 is limited to Jio and Reliance Communications.

Very recently BSNL expressed their interest on 700MHz band for LTE/4G roll out but I am very much skeptical about BSNL's move which is often hindered by several factors. 

JIO Kolkata : Band 3 Gets Total 10MHz, Better Speed Sparked

In most of the parts of Kolkata, Jio begins operations with 20MHz x 2300MHz (Band 40), 5MHz x 1800MHz (Band 3) and 5MHz x 850MHz (Band 5, from RCom) to cover up indoor and outdoor. 

As I found yesterday Jio now adds another 5MHz in 1800MHz (Band 3) in Kolkata - making use of 2 x 5MHz channels on this band. It improves both downlink and uplink immediately as I experienced in Barrackpore, Northern suburb of Kolkata. 

Apart from Rajasthan and Kolkata, Jio does not have its own 10MHz spectrum in 1800MHz band. So in other circles Jio will create 2 channels of 5MHz on 1800MHz by sharing spectrum from RCom, but I guess it will take some time. 

Vodafone and Idea Bet Big on LTE-2500 (TDD), But LTE2500 Ecosystem is NOT Mature Enough

In the recently concluded spectrum auction country's second and third largest mobile operator -Vodafone India and Idea Cellular has acquired a good amount of spectrum in 2500MHz band, which will be used for LTE roll out. This band of spectrum would be used by Vodafone and Idea as a replacement of Jio, Airtel and Tikona's spectrum on 2300MHz band. It should be noted that Vodafone and Idea did not bag any spectrum on 2300MHz band in 2010's auction.

Vodafone and Idea will create a new LTE ecosystem in the country on 2500MHz band (TDD-LTE on Band 41). Both companies did not have any spectrum in the 2300MHz band and they are currently offering LTE-FD on the liberalized 1800 MHz band only. Vodafone has acquired 2500MHz spectrum in 14 circles while Idea won the same in 15 circles.

While Vodafone targets metro circles and mostly cat-B circles for its upcoming LTE-TD Band 41 services, Idea skips metro circles and has concentrated on cat-B and cat-C circles.

Jio Sets to Change Indian Telecom Landscape : My Take

It has been nearly a month after India's richest man Mukesh Ambani has announced his ambitious telecom project - digital services of Reliance Jio. Jio is different from all existing mobile operators of the country by many ways.

Jio is completely green field operator which has only 4G-LTE network without any fall back 2G/3G network. And since its network went online it continues to offer services free of cost to its customers and will be free til 31st December 2016.

Let's see how Jio changes the market.

Huge Footfall in Reliance Digital Stores

Reliance Digital stores are yet to make a spot as a cheap store for gadget lovers. We at Kolkata still depends on Chandni market or more recently on online stores. Reliance Digital stores had few visitors, however after Jio announced free SIM at Digital stores, people are now visiting these stores. And it becomes a crowd.