Cdma To Lag Gsm In Subscriber Base

[Arun 795]

The Hindu Business Line - August 29, 2004

IN July 2004, CDMA mobile services in the country grew 3.43 per cent in subscriber base, while GSM mobile services grew 4.7 per cent.

CDMA's growth was on a smaller base of 8.068 million (June 2004), while GSM's growth was on a much larger base, of 29.205 million. As at end July, CDMA services had 8.346 million customers, while GSM services had 30.593 million users.

If they continue to average these monthly rates going ahead as well, CDMA services will never ever catch up with GSM services in the country, points out a senior official with BSNL (which is operator for both technologies).

Although a uniform access licence means that CDMA and GSM mobile technologies are on par as far as the Indian regulations are concerned, do some inherent differences in the technologies mean that one of them has an edge over the other?

Statistics from the Web sites of the technology associations show that the global CDMA mobile base as of March 2004 was 200 million, while the GSM's was more than five times as much at 1045 million.

Firstly, there are fewer countries who have adopted CDMA technology, said Mr Sandip Basu, President and CEO, BPL Mobile, a GSM player. "True mobility is the GSM forte. In the US, the move is towards uprooting CDMA and getting GSM going. The whole of Europe is GSM. It is only in Ghana, Iraq, Korea and Japan that you find CDMA networks. China is like India, it has both GSM and CDMA."

"The fact that there is no handset portability, as well as true roaming, is the chief disadvantage of the technology," he said.

"GSM moreover has open standards and not proprietary standards where the source code is closed," said Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Secretary General of the Cellular Operators Association of India, which represents GSM players.

CDMA players insist that theirs is the better technology that makes better use of spectrum, and is better suited to data usage.

"As far as the user is concerned, it has more to do with the type of services offered and how the mobile carriers differentiate their services. What adds significance is the level of support in terms of better network coverage, call quality, superior completion rates and so on," said Ms Kobita Desai, Principal Analyst, Telecom, Gartner India. "As such both technologies have their own space and can co-exist and complement each other."

However, GSM has been around much longer, she adds: "Because of its incumbency nature, which gives it the first mover advantage, GSM continues, and probably will continue to be the number one technology. We don't believe CDMA will overtake GSM in India either, at least in the next five years that form our forecast period."

"One must also recognise the fact that there are only two CDMA carriers (Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices being the active ones) but three or four GSM carriers in each operational area."

[harsh 1]

as far as i think, the only bottleneck in rim's growth is handset options.

if they provide a lot of fancy handset at gsm handsets prices, they would definately grow faster and bigger.

[deepu 0]

I think we may soon see CDMA handsets with SIM option similar to GSM handsets. That may change all .....