Bharti to launch HSPA next year

Manoj Kohli - CEO of Indian mobile market-leader Bharti Airtel - this morning said that mobile broadband is set to become a key driver of growth in India’s mobile market following the long-awaited award of 3G licenses in the country early next year. “Wireless broadband will be a major source of growth for the next five years,” Kohli told delegates in his keynote address. “DSL is too expensive so wireless broadband will be a great success and will overtake [DSL] in the next two to three years.” He added that he expects Bharti to switch on its first HSPA networks in time for India’s Diwali celebrations next Autumn. He admitted that data revenues in India have stagnated at around 10 percent but said that Bharti would “really focus on data when HSPA is ready.”

China Mobile reveals LTE ambitions

Wang Jianzhou - chairman and CEO of China Mobile, the world’s largest operator by subscribers - today revealed further details on his company’s planned move to LTE technology. Reiterating hopes that a unified TDD/FDD standard for LTE can be developed, he spoke of his desire to see a “single [TDD/FDD] chipset to achieve global economies of scale and global roaming capability.” He said that this idea “is not only supported by operators, the GSMA and NGMN, but has also gotten commitment of manufacture from network vendors and chipset suppliers. All of them agree to support the merger of TD-LTE and FDD-LTE.”

China Unicom updates on 3G

Chairman Chang Xiaobing of China Unicom - China’s second-largest mobile operator – this morning provided delegates with an update on the operator’s 3G rollout, proclaiming that the new network will cover all of China’s urban areas by the middle of next year. The WCDMA-based network – branded as ‘Wo’ – launched commercially on 1 October this year and Chairman Chang said that some 285 cities have been covered to date with this figure expected to rise to 335 cities by year-end. He noted that 110,000 3G base stations had been build to date with around 10,000 of these shared with rival operators. Specialist 3G Unicom stores have now been opened in 285 Chinese cities.

Chairman Chang said that Unicom is deploying a “unified branding, packaging and marketing” strategy for the new network based around the Wo brand, while various subsidiaries have been set up to manage specific 3G service areas such as music, video and mobile broadband. He added that Unicom has also broken new ground in pricing, claiming to have launched one of China’s first nationwide, all inclusive data tariffs.

Docomo preps December 2010 LTE launch, to invest US$3.4B

NTT Docomo’s president and CEO, Ryuji Yamada, stole the headlines at this morning’s GSMA Mobile Asia Congress by announcing that Japan’s largest mobile operator will launch commercial LTE services in December next year. “We won’t use the interim technology of HSPA+ as it is more efficient to go straight to LTE,” he told delegates.

Asia Pacific to exceed 2B connections this year

The GSMA kicked off its Mobile Asia Congress event this week with news that the region will cross the 2 billion mobile connections threshold by the end of the year and will exceed 3 billion connections by 2013. Other findings from the association’s Asia Pacific Mobile Observatory Report – produced by management consultants A.T. Kearney – include a tripling in size of the market since 2003, adding over a billion connections and growing at 26 percent CAGR to reach 1.7 billion connections in 2008.

Huawei takes number two spot in mobile gear

China’s Huawei has underlined its status as a top tier vendor by becoming the world’s second-largest mobile network manufacturer in the third-quarter, according to research group Dell’Oro. The Chinese vendor almost doubled its market share from a year ago to 20 percent, surpassing Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Ericsson’s market share of 32 percent remained flat year-on-year. Huawei has been on the rise for several quarters, with the firm enjoying a 17 percent market share in the second quarter.