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New calls at CommunicAsia: smartphone from LG. |
One theme new to CommunicAsia, Singapore's annual telecommunications technology fest was "green" telecoms. The industry is moving towards green solutions as a matter of necessity. The average revenue per user is dropping rapidly, and is (for example) now less than US$6 in India, said Dipesh Mohile, Senior Analyst with Tonse Telecom, an India-based research and investment advisory company.
Telecom producers have to take advantage of every opportunity to add users. As Mohile asked, how do you get base stations into rural areas with no electricity? It's hard and expensive to maintain diesel generators, so operational exchanges are hostage to oil prices.
In India, two billion litres of diesel are used every year to run remote telecom base stations. By next year, India needs to build another 100,000 base stations, according to Mohile. Backing him up, a report by US-based tech specialist ABI Research estimates that Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICS) will deploy 230,000 base stations by 2010, largely in rural areas.
"The solution is multifold," said Mohile. There are measures to optimise the network and reduce the number of base stations, the operating software can be upgraded and changes can even be made to the base station design to reduce cooling needs.
Changes in operations (such as under energy saver mode during off-peak hours) also reduce power needs. "All these measures, for minor capital expenditure, can reduce power consumption by 75% to 80%," he explained at CommunicAsia.
One company offering green solutions was Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL). This Indian company has developed a solar-powered GSM base station, which was officially launched during the event. Called WorldGSM, the goal of these base stations is to provide mobile services to the next two billion people for whom it is uneconomical to build networks, where the average revenue per user can be as little as US$2.
VNL has completed trials of WorldGSM in villages in India, and plans to roll out the product next year into Southeast Asia and Africa.
This year is clearly the year of the smartphone. Manufacturers such as ASUS, Blackberry, Huawei, LG, Samsung and ZTE were all launching new models, while players such as Yahoo were launching interfaces for smartphones.
Industry analyst Gerd Leonhard pointed out that a report from UK-based business publication specialist Informa last month reported that for the first time sales of smartphones exceeded that of notebooks in 2008 and that every analyst covering mobile phones is convinced sales of smartphones will increase this year, despite economic conditions.
US-based market analyst Jupiter Research, meanwhile, projects that smartphones will take up 27% of the market by 2014, double the 13% of 2008.
