World biz and more as seen from India

Thursday, July 14, 2005

sOid Speak : FWP - the Indian Superman?

The current Indian telecommunications market is predominently ruled by the GSM technology (Global System for Mobile Communications), with players like Orange, Hutch & Airtel ruling the roost.The new kid on the block - CDMA (Code division multiple access) finds company in the battling duo of Reliance Infocomm and Tata Indicom.

The point of discussion today however, does not focus entirely on the mobile market in India, but towards something that has been a mainstay in the country for quite some time. The landline or the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System)as techies would call it, has been a necessity in most houses in the country, with a mobile only being an "Addition to landline".

Well then again the point of discussion is not even the landline telephony system in India, but something which is rather new to the Indian arena of 'PostPaid' or 'Billing' systems.

FWP - as the header reads stands for Fixed Wireless Phones, or rather Fixed Wireless Telephones (FWT) - a WLL based technology (Wireless in local loop). Currently the Indian market has only two key operators using the CDMA technology for their fixed wireless offerings - Reliance InfoComm and Tata Indicom. And the point that interests me the most is this field of offering a 'like mobile' product, which promises the freedom of a mobile at landline rates.

Only future (or rather my next post) will let us know what lies ahead for this new superman in the Indian Telecom market, who claims to be able to give the customer more than what he ever imagined of......will it succeed.....is this what the customer wants.............catch the next episode of 'sOid Speak'