Wi-Fi is becoming steadily more popular in India, thanks to the falling cost of devices and the immaturity of alternative technologies in the market.
Prices of data-capable smartphones have dropped steeply in the region to about 3000 rupees ($67) today, while a large number of Indian mobile handset brands such as Olive, Karbonn, Micromax, Lava and others are unleashing more smartphone choices for less.
On the upper end of the device spectrum, Samsung Galaxy Tab now retails its new version 2 for only 24,000 rupees, down from 29,000 rupees just four months ago, and is flying off the shelves.
From the networks side, you will notice that the stars are aligning for a perfect take off of Wi-Fi. As of May 2011, it will be a full year that the 3G / BWA spectrum auctions and its infamous investigation aftermath were initiated and not a single BWA network has seen the light of day, let alone launch of service.
While 3G licensees have attempted to light up select towns with 3G, there is no single new service the user can connect with and claim a high quality experience which was otherwise not available. In this vacuum Wi-Fi appears to be a great alternative.
Wi-Fi service providers are therefore scrambling to expand coverage. Thus Ozone, Zylog, Tikona and MetaMax have stepped on the gas and are enhancing build-out adding more POPs, expanding coverage and increasing footprint.
Ozone is exploring to tie up with Vodafone and Idea while a technology collaboration agreement with Alcatel-Lucent is already in place.
Tikona has perhaps built the largest Wi-Fi network in India with Wi-Fi APs supplied by Ruckus Wireless. An estimated 45,000 APs are already deployed and an agreement with Aircel, India’s most data-savvy GSM operator is already in place. Shyam-owned Spectranet and MetaMax are contributing to an overall build-out which has tremendous potential to grow.
Down south, Zylog’s Wi5 is making waves with a 100% pre-paid model which has a combined subscriber base of over 30,000. Tonse believes that Zylog probably has cracked the Wi-Fi base station pricing model better than anyone else and is able to setup a POP at the lowest cost per subscriber, using a combination of own software plus third party hardware.
Zylog has even penetrated tier 2 towns and if offering fail-safe Wi-Fi in over 150 locations. Plans are afoot to grow to 179 locations and 100,00 subscribers by year end. Zylog Wi-Fi generated a top line of about $5.15 million.
Indian cellular operators have suddenly more respect for the relatively smaller Wi-Fi counterparts. While initially these free-to-air spectrum operators were considered yet another enterprise customer who would buy bulk bandwidth, the relationship is now more symbiotic.
Wi-Fi ISPs are now more likely to carry access traffic from larger captive Wi-Fi base than pricey data plans from cellular operators. Besides, retail outlets are willing to make room for Wi-Fi gear as the added attraction of offering Wi-Fi soon becomes a ‘must have’.
But perhaps an even bigger opportunity lies shrouded under clouds: wholesale Wi-Fi offload. Instead of creating multiple small regional Wi-Fi PoPs and creating several bilateral relationships with individual mobile operators, a large scale, carrier-class wholesale Wi-Fi model should emerge in India.
With only a fraction of 3G sites just lit up, none of the TD-LTE / BWA offerings live and mobile data traffic beginning to grow in volume, it is but a matter of months before a large scale data explosion becomes a reality.
If a large nationwide Wi-Fi network is built out and a ‘LightSquared-like’ wholesale model is launched, it should have plenty of takers.
After a BWA spectrum auction that generated billions in revenues to the government a business model around unlicensed spectrum that is non-retail suddenly seems lot more appealing for this bandwidth hungry nation.
Sridhar Pai runs wireless research & consulting businessTonse Telecom from Bengaluru, India