So it is official that Airtel will roll out TD-LTE (Time Division Long Term Evolution) based 4th generation mobile broadband services in Kolkata in this month. We also suggested that tariffs of Airtel 4G would be affordable as in that way they can bring mobile revolution. Though our readers are not keeping hopes with Airtel as the largest operator in India believes in premium pricing.

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4G in India Success Depends on Operators Strategy

Recently GSMA predicts that within 2016 India will be the second largest wireless broadband market. It is not unnatural, as fixed broadband penetration is not good enough in India due to several factors like poor coverage by private players, monopoly of BSNL in fixed broadband market and pricing. So to offer broadband for all it is the better way to use wireless route to reach everyone.

India was late to enter 3G era, 3G is still not a good business case for operators as well as for consumers mostly due to high tariff and moderate coverage. Also operators are not pushing 3G, as they do have only 5 MHz spectrum more 3G users may lead to network choked. Handset pricing is another issue for 3G adoption. But with 4G there is not much delay as LTE started its journey by Teliasonera in Sweden & Norway in Decemeber 2009. India operators chose LTE over WiMAX. Currently most operators worldwide are commited to LTE deployment as the natural upgrade path from GSM/UMTS and CDMA.

In India BWA spectrum (20MHz x2) auctioned was in 2300MHz band, which is suitable for LTE-TDD. LTE-TDD is not a Chinese technology, rather inception of LTE-TDD was by 3GPP partners but the technology is hugely backed & matured by China Mobile. In the beginning of 2011 China Mobile had done their field trial but yet to offer commercial services. TD-LTE works via asymmetric use of unpaired spectrum – one band of spectrum for downlink and uplink.