World Gets 50th 5G Network

As China’s telecom trio launches 5G services in China, it marks 50^th 3GPP compliant commercial 5G launches in the world. As per GSA data, currently 50 operators are offering 5G services globally, in 27 different countries by the end of October 2019. Europe is most 5G dense continent, with 21 operators catering 5G in 12 countries.

The report also noted that 328 operators in 109 countries had announced they were investing in 5G. 

Joe Barrett, the President of the GSA commented: "I think that we have all been surprised by how quickly 5G has taken off, with deployments and commitments from across the globe gathering pace. This latest milestone, combined with commercial launches in the world’s largest mobile market, is set to lead to an explosion in 5G users and also have a knock-on impact on driving both use cases and innovation.”

#ShRT - DRIVE will Make You cRaZy like Hell

Drive, the latest one on Netflix, is another example how these days big production houses fails in bollywood as content wise they are big zero. Drive, starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Jacqueline Fernandez, Sapna Pabbi, Boman Irani and Netflix star Pankaj Tripathi, is directed by Tarun Manushukani and aims to be desi Fast and Furious but fails miserably. And just forget to tell you it's produced by Dharma Productions, i.e. the house of Karan Johar. 

Earlier I used to watch some shitty hollywood flick which are actually direct-to-dvd, Drive is a similar kind of bollywood garbage dumped on Netflix. 

If you can remember Bard of Blood, from SRK's Red Chillies is also a flop show. It seems these production houses make a really bad film and then they are selling it to Netflix. 

With such bullshit content, Netflix may loose Indian customers pretty soon. Well Netflix has quite good number of originals contents in English and their Sacred Games is a critically acclaimed webseries. Only thing they need to be choosy while picking up from bollywood firms. 

Fiber is Must for 5G - What Operators are Doing?

As the wireless telecom market went into consolidation for last 5-7 years, we can see only 4 operators in the market, i.e. Jio, Airtel, Vodafone Idea and BSNL (MTNL-BSNL merger is announced two days back).

Frankly speaking Jio is ahead of all, thanks to its backhaul assests which will also fuel its broadband dream as well as upcoming 5G venture in long run. 

Jio's tower arm, as it was spun off from main company as Jio Infratel in March 2019, is announced to be acquired by Canada's Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. and its affiliates in multiphases. With 45000 towers from Reliance Communications, and another 125000 towers made by Jio itself, the total number of Jio towers reaches 1,70,000; which mades Jio Infratel as largest tower company beating Indus Towers. However 25% of them are monopoles.  (India's tower companies in detail )

Carriers Adopting Cloud Platforms to Embrace 5G

As 4G goes mainstream, operators want to be a step ahead of each others, and that cann't be done without technological advancement. 

Jio has been partnering with Microsoft for some time, and utilizing Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to cater the needs of local business. 

Vodafone Idea is also partnering with Red Hat Inc, to transform its network data centers to open standards. VIL will use Red Hat's open hybrid cloud platform OpenStack. Not only that VIL has also extended partnership with TCS for another 5 years, and they will use Business 4.0™ framework of TCS. 

Bharti Airtel is also optimizing the expenditure - recently they acquired 26% in AMPSolar Evolution Private Limited for Rs 8.4 crore to go ecofriendly, and to meet green energy needs and to optimize energy costs. Airtel is also gearing up to use 5G-ready Cloud packet core from Ericsson, which consists of virtual Evolved Packet Gateway (vEPG). This will allow Airtel to enhance network capacity, in the need of ever increasing data demand of Indian audience. 

NAVIC is Coming to Your Smartphones in Late 2019

On Oct 14, 2019 Qualcomm announced support for Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) backed Indian Regional Naviagation Satellite System (IRNSS) in select chipset platforms across the company's upcoming portfolio, which marks the India's indigenous technological prowess.

The collaboration delivered the first-ever NavIC (brand name of IRNSS, acronym for NAVigation with Indian Constellation) demonstration using the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ Mobile Platforms on September 19th, and later again at India Mobile Congress, October 14-16. Support for NavIC will be available in select Qualcomm Technologies’ chipset platforms starting in late 2019 and commercial devices with NavIC support are expected to be available during the first half of 2020.  

Jio to Charge for Offnet Calls, to Push TRAI to drop IUC?

Jio, the dream telecom and digital project by Mukesh Ambani was a pioneer in many things in Indian telecom, which I explained in earlier article. Most prominently Jio cut down the tariff drastically that none of the incumbents thought of. The unlimited data (per day 1.5 Gig of data, then FUP) and truly unlimited voice calls from Jio made the incumbents think differently and they were compelled to follow Jio's way of tariffs. However Jio stops unlimited calls w.e.f. 10th October 2019, onnet calls will be free and calls to other network will be charged at 10p/mi.

Back in 2008-09 Virgin Mobile was offering 10p/min of balance credited for incoming calls, yes they were getting paid from the call originating network at 20p/min as IUC (interconnect usage charge) and was generous enough to pay back to customers.

TRAI reduced IUC to 14p/mi in 2015, and then again IUC reduced to just 6p/mi from October 1st, 2017. TRAI wanted to make IUC zero from January, 2020.

How to Know Your LTE Network Details

As of 19th February, 2019 Kolkata has the following mobile operators : 

Airtel 2G + 3G + 4G + Tata Docomo 2G

Vodafone 2G + 3G + 4G + Idea 2G + 4G

BSNL 2G + 3G

Jio 4G + Reliance 4G
IAF 3G

Updated on 1st November 2019
Airtel 2G + 4G 
Vodafone IN 2G + 3G + 4G
BSNL 2G + 3G
Jio 4G + Reliance 4G 
IAF 3G