India's CDMA story is over, as RCom announced the completion of the acquisition of MTS India network. It seems to be an end of Indian telecom, as the CDMA network of MTS is to be shut down by 30th of November 2017. The lone CDMA survivor is Tata Docomo CDMA, which has been already acquired by Airtel and 800MHz will be soon vacated for LTE deployment.
For MTS CDMA customers it will be very much problematic, as the text received by users from RCom, mentions clearly that they can migrate to RCOM's 4G data network or port out to the carrier of their choice.
Recently RCom and Aircel, who had the plan to merge, opted out from the merger agreement and post that Rs. 4500 crore debt-laden RCom has gone through several drastic decisions - they will not renew license of DTH business (services will be stopped by November 18 and customers will be moved to Tata Sky) operated under RelianceTV; and planned for shut down of 2G & 3G data & voice (1800/900/2100 Mhz) networks across the country.
As per the sources and different media reports Anil Ambani led Reliance Communications (RCom) will now focus on 4G oriented business strategy (from retail) along with its Global Cloud Exchange and data centre biz. On the 4G front, RCom has rolled out LTE-FDD on the 800-850MHz band so far, and there is no Voice over LTE (VoLTE). RCom shares their 850MHz LTE network with Reliance Jio.
Briefly, if you are an MTS customer, your fancy CDMA network is gone. You have to shift to RCOM GSM/4G network and RCom is all set to shut down its 2G/3G GSM network very soon. So you are left with RCom's LTE network without the voice. Hence all MTS customers will have to port out to other operators like Airtel, BSNL, Vodafone, Idea or Jio.
Did you get any such SMS do let us know via comments?
