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.

WiFi at Sealdah Railway Station (of RailWire-Google) : Review

In West Bengal, the main two gateway railway station - Sealdah and Howrah both have free WiFi offerings. Howrah got the first with MTS, while Sealdah got its later, but from Google-Railwire initiative.

While MTS offers 30 minutes free usage at Howrah railway station, Google-Railwire offers unlimited usage at Sealdah (though speed goes down after sometime as a part of fair usage policy).

Note that RailTel Corp (RCIL) signed an agreement with Mahataa Information India Pvt Ltd (MIIPL), an arm of Google Inc, to equip 400 stations with Wi-Fi. Hence when you are online, your ISP will not be detected as RailTel or RailWire, rather it will be detected as Mahataa Information India.

Logging in to Google's free Wifi at Sealdah Station is easy. Just keep your WiFi on your smartphone, it will be detected as RailWire WiFi. 

JIO Data Speed Fell Drastically within 3 Weeks of Launch Announcement

I am bit hurry while typing down this story. Let's cut it short, for last 3 days I found that JIO's downlink is quite slow, and very much slow whenever I go indoor and Jio LTE moves to LTE1800 or LTE850.

Using the Jio's Netvelocity app, I checked out all three LTE frequencies - Band 40/Band 3/Band 5

Location : Barrackpore
Time : 00:00 to 01:00 am, 2016-09-24

Reliance Communications LTE Speed Test (850MHz FDD-LTE)

Reliance Communications or simply RCOM took a major step in June this year - winding up CDMA and deploy LTE on this vacated spectrum.

In Kolkata RCOM LTE was launched in August 2016. RCom is sharing its own 850MHz spectrum with Jio. Though Jio does enable this band for when you go indoor with poor signal on 1800MHz.

Initially RCom started offering LTE to CDMA customers only, later LTE was extended to GSM customers also.