Predicting the future of telecommunications in India is difficult, for the sweeping changes that are taking place do not

seem to allow any single trend or technology to establish its exclusive presence. Also, the industry too remains divided among various schools of thought on the discussion pertaining to broadband wireless access (BWA). India has already positioned itself as #2 nation in the new world order as far as voice markets are concerned. However, the broadband penetration and consumption leadership is largely dominated by far East Asian countries like Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and several north European nations like Denmark and Norway. Wireless broadband is certainly among the most sought after technologies of this century. Importantly for a country like India, which is a classic case of extreme diversity, ubiquitous broadband wireless access can indeed catapult the face of India's economy by adding immensely to myriad possibilities like enhancing urban standard of living, boosting corporate productivity, changing how we educate our children, deliver healthcare to arid regions, manage energy more efficiently, ensure public safety like never before, engage government far effectively, and organize and disseminate essential knowledge among wider sections of recipients. From 8 mn in 2006 to nearly 15 mn in early 2009, the number of Indians with Internet access has grown truly exponentially. UEs packed with advanced applications are helping the subscribers enrich and transform their life. Saviors on Horizon It is at this juncture that the role of 3G and 4G based broadband technologies is being perceived as highly positive in shaping broadband industry and reach in India. Also these technologies have the potential to deliver broadband at affordable rate and with unprecedented quality. Bridging India's digital divide, therefore, depends on adequate spectrum availability and advancement in BWA technologies. Also considering parallel global developments, 4G based BWA technologies on account of ample support from other stakeholders such as equipment makers and governments will indeed introduce new frontiers in India's wireless broadband future. Since advanced BWA technologies come with many times higher spectral efficiencies and capability to support superior channel bandwidths, they will permit delivery of supersized data at a far competitive cost than ever before. This will also introduce many more cost-effective service plans and VAS. Moreover, 4G driven BWA technologies come packed with the capability to provide consistent data throughputs, which can effectively support rich media applications.

Likely Trends of the Industry Packetcore-the De Facto Paradigm: Having realized the benefits of IP as a core for all communications related to voice, data and video, operators would unanimously choose packetcore transition as the preferred enabler to reduce cost and maximize resource utilization. Service Providers Transforming into Integrated Multimedia Providers: Swayed by the growing influence of varied voice and data needs, service providers will choose to do away from the dumb pipe provider model and will roll out service plans tailored specifically to suit such emerging subscriber needs. Consequently, volume and data based charging would be replaced by applications centric focus to make it more relevant for the subscribers. Mobility with Added Goodness of Social Networking: For mobile equipment vendors, competing on hardware features like cameras, MP3s or video viewing would no longer suffice. As social media networks would grow more deep-rooted among tomorrow's mobile generation, equipment makers will feel the need to differentiate their offerings enabling increased personalization of the mobile broadband experience with richer integration of social networking applications such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and email services among others. And as more and more subscribers turn to such devices, newer OS platforms capable of providing better support to such UEs will also emerge.

Meshing of Location Based and Wireless Services: Location based services will integrate with wireless networks including Wi-Fi and WiMAX to provide integrated applications usable in outdoor or dense urban environments. Managed Services Model: Managed services is becoming a big trend in the industry. Migration to an IP platfrom can be expensive; opting for a managed services model will allow the operators better control costs and reduce operating cost MVNO Based Business Model It is quite likely that several operators might choose to resort to MVNO business model, for post-3G auctions this model obviously offers a great opportunity to permeate into under-penetrated regions while also beating the ARPU challenge with well laid-out segmentation plan. This sentiment is also shared by several industry experts as they believe that given the case of some operators who have failed to match with India's average ARPU, MVNO model can certainly provide the much needed succor to these operators. The government too would be benefited in turn by avoiding buy-back of spectrum from such operators. Thus, MVNOs have a fair chance of receiving better preference and place in India's mobile market than what it used to be earlier. The Key Trends in OSS/BSS Segment

Changing the Future of Telecom through Wireless Broadband Continued from page: 2

Vaibhav Mehta Thursday, February 10, 2011 Integrated BSS and Subscriber Management: We are seeing more developments towards single integrated and convergent BSS/OSS architectures, and more new integration approaches based on having a single customer and product database. Elitecore offers end-to-end pre-integrated modules for Mediation, Network and Session Management (AAA), billing, policy management, and real-time rating/charging with a single reference architecture to telco. This gives the operators an advantage in reducing TCO associated with buying individual modules and associated integration and maintenance cost. The product performance is also improved as it is a pre-integrated offering giving it high horizontal and vertical scalability. The improved customer experience-no duplication, reduced errors, and a consistently improved experience across multiple channels-will enable operators to focus on evolving new models of customer engagement and revenue generation. Real-Time Charging and Convergence: Markets continue to move in the direction of real-time and convergent service capabilities. Elitecore Crestel enables online charging and rating, particularly for mobile broadband services that gives flexibility to charge based on variety of parameters. Policy Based Control: Policy based control on the services will be the key priority of the operators, so as to enhance the user experience by ensuring QoS and dynamic bandwidth management. Elitecore offers NetVertex that enables operators reduce subscriber churn, the cost associated with non-business data traffic and increase ARPU through monitoring subscriber usage pattern, network contention, manage application wise bandwidth and enabling usage based charging, It also provides a platform for launch of subscriber initiated on-demand services like BoD, music on demand, gaming on demand, etc. Vaibhav Mehta The author is vice president, new business development, Elitecore vadmail@cybermedia.co.in