World Telecommunication Day is celebrated on the 17th of May every year. But this year it was completely forgotten, at least in India, and on the social networking site. Being a telecom enthusiast I was not pleased to not see a single mention of this. And this compelled me to blog (its been exactly 2 months since my last blog) about my passion and my first love.
Telecommunication can be divided into various categories: services using airwaves provided by the telecom companies, cell phones and the passive infrastructure comprising telecom towers, fiber optic or copper cables and to some extent satellites.I would briefly describe cell phones and passive infrastructure and a detailed explanation of the first part since that part has been one of my favourites since childhood.
To start with, cell phones have come a long way from the cordless type phones which would easily injure a person even if hit by mistake to the sleek and sexy phones being launched at the speed of light these days. Once Nokia ruled this market but has now passed on the lead to Samsung which has a phone in each and every segment you ask for ( phones start from 999 to Rs. 44000 for the latest samsung galaxy s3). The original Nokia and Motorola phones gave importance to call clarity, strength and superior battery life while the latest phones like the iPhone and galaxies of the world package everything in the 4 odd inch screen phone but come with the disadvantage of a poor battery life.
The passive infrastructure includes telecom towers or in technical terms as one of my favorite teachers, Ms.Geeta Hayagreev, would say the base switching center and the base transceiver system which in layman's language means the device which takes care of your call and data routing over the network. Very few companies like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications have completely owned tower companies while the others just hire the services of towers owned by dedicated tower companies. Some notable names are American Tower Company and GTL Infrastructure. Passive Infrastructure would also include the fiber optics which are the latest means of communication and are found to be quite effective. Vodafone and Reliance Communication have an extensive network of these cables which virtually connect the whole world.
Now comes the network part. I would first go into the network which supports our calls and data. Technically speaking ( the only thing I've learnt in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering) frequency spectrum is used in the 800MHz( mainly used for CDMA services), 900MHz ( used by old GSM operators like Airtel and Vodafone), 1800 MHz (used by new GSM players like RCOMM) and the 2.1GHz (used for 3G services providing higher data rates and better voice quality). Other frequency bands which are used are 850MHz and 1900MHz which are used in the USA. CDMA(Code Division Multiple Access) services was developed by Qualcomm of USA and is used by companies such as AT&T and Reliance Communications. It makes use of the entire spectrum available and hence it is considered more efficient in terms of usage. The rival technology which is widely used today is the GSM (Global Systems for Mobile Communications) was developed in Europe and basically divides the frequency available in either time slots or smaller frequency bands. That was a brief description of the technical aspect of the mobile communications.
Since I don't have a very good idea about the telecom sector of countries other than India, I will stick to the Indian Telecom Story. Cellular phone service started way back in 1996 when the longest serving chief minister of India, Mr. Jyoti Basu made the first phone call on a Modi-Telstra network for some 16 odd rupees. Modi network Back then even incoming calls were charged and it was only the elite people who owned a cell phone, my dad being one of them and that's how it became my passion and first love. From 16 rupees in the late 90's to just a rupee and free incoming in 2001 thanks to Dhirubhai Ambani's vision that in order to be a successful telecom company you don't have to compete with rival companies but with the post card and hence it should be affordable. And then there was no looking back. Call rates have fallen to drastically low levels of just 30p/min with free incoming calls while my best friends Akshay and Nirjar still pay for incoming in the USA where the first mobile phone was manufactured by Motorola. Even though there has been hue and cry over corruption in the telecom sector where spectrum was given at lower prices by A.Raja , I believe this very fact allowed 14 players in India and reduced cost rates to extremely low levels though it could have been handled in a better way. But as of today Indians have the privilege of good services at cheapest rates in the world.
As I write this, there has been uncertainty from the government over the future of this industry and even though third generation services haven't had the success as the operators expected ( only 12million subscribers use 3G out of an estimated 680 million subscribers) India has already embraced 4G technology with Airtel launching services in Kolkata and Bangalore. It remains to be seen whether companies can profitably roll out 4G services in a price sensitive country like ours where operators have had to cut 3G services by upto 70% to attract more customers and recover the heavy price paid for the airwaves and missed calls are still a trend. Whatever the scene is, the customers stand to benefit from this and have access to all the three technologies (second, third and fourth generation services) at the same time.
Telecommunication can be divided into various categories: services using airwaves provided by the telecom companies, cell phones and the passive infrastructure comprising telecom towers, fiber optic or copper cables and to some extent satellites.I would briefly describe cell phones and passive infrastructure and a detailed explanation of the first part since that part has been one of my favourites since childhood.
To start with, cell phones have come a long way from the cordless type phones which would easily injure a person even if hit by mistake to the sleek and sexy phones being launched at the speed of light these days. Once Nokia ruled this market but has now passed on the lead to Samsung which has a phone in each and every segment you ask for ( phones start from 999 to Rs. 44000 for the latest samsung galaxy s3). The original Nokia and Motorola phones gave importance to call clarity, strength and superior battery life while the latest phones like the iPhone and galaxies of the world package everything in the 4 odd inch screen phone but come with the disadvantage of a poor battery life.
The passive infrastructure includes telecom towers or in technical terms as one of my favorite teachers, Ms.Geeta Hayagreev, would say the base switching center and the base transceiver system which in layman's language means the device which takes care of your call and data routing over the network. Very few companies like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications have completely owned tower companies while the others just hire the services of towers owned by dedicated tower companies. Some notable names are American Tower Company and GTL Infrastructure. Passive Infrastructure would also include the fiber optics which are the latest means of communication and are found to be quite effective. Vodafone and Reliance Communication have an extensive network of these cables which virtually connect the whole world.
Now comes the network part. I would first go into the network which supports our calls and data. Technically speaking ( the only thing I've learnt in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering) frequency spectrum is used in the 800MHz( mainly used for CDMA services), 900MHz ( used by old GSM operators like Airtel and Vodafone), 1800 MHz (used by new GSM players like RCOMM) and the 2.1GHz (used for 3G services providing higher data rates and better voice quality). Other frequency bands which are used are 850MHz and 1900MHz which are used in the USA. CDMA(Code Division Multiple Access) services was developed by Qualcomm of USA and is used by companies such as AT&T and Reliance Communications. It makes use of the entire spectrum available and hence it is considered more efficient in terms of usage. The rival technology which is widely used today is the GSM (Global Systems for Mobile Communications) was developed in Europe and basically divides the frequency available in either time slots or smaller frequency bands. That was a brief description of the technical aspect of the mobile communications.
Since I don't have a very good idea about the telecom sector of countries other than India, I will stick to the Indian Telecom Story. Cellular phone service started way back in 1996 when the longest serving chief minister of India, Mr. Jyoti Basu made the first phone call on a Modi-Telstra network for some 16 odd rupees. Modi network Back then even incoming calls were charged and it was only the elite people who owned a cell phone, my dad being one of them and that's how it became my passion and first love. From 16 rupees in the late 90's to just a rupee and free incoming in 2001 thanks to Dhirubhai Ambani's vision that in order to be a successful telecom company you don't have to compete with rival companies but with the post card and hence it should be affordable. And then there was no looking back. Call rates have fallen to drastically low levels of just 30p/min with free incoming calls while my best friends Akshay and Nirjar still pay for incoming in the USA where the first mobile phone was manufactured by Motorola. Even though there has been hue and cry over corruption in the telecom sector where spectrum was given at lower prices by A.Raja , I believe this very fact allowed 14 players in India and reduced cost rates to extremely low levels though it could have been handled in a better way. But as of today Indians have the privilege of good services at cheapest rates in the world.
As I write this, there has been uncertainty from the government over the future of this industry and even though third generation services haven't had the success as the operators expected ( only 12million subscribers use 3G out of an estimated 680 million subscribers) India has already embraced 4G technology with Airtel launching services in Kolkata and Bangalore. It remains to be seen whether companies can profitably roll out 4G services in a price sensitive country like ours where operators have had to cut 3G services by upto 70% to attract more customers and recover the heavy price paid for the airwaves and missed calls are still a trend. Whatever the scene is, the customers stand to benefit from this and have access to all the three technologies (second, third and fourth generation services) at the same time.
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