Mobile Broadband for Inclusive Connectivity: What Deters the High-Capacity Deployment of 4G-LTE Innovation in India?

Abstract

The global market uptake of the fourth generation-Long-Term Evolution (4G-LTE) Mobile Broadband (MoBro) services are steadily rising, leading to higher capital investments by mobile network operators (MNOs) to scale-up their infrastructure for meeting the impending demand for MoBro data the world over. However, MNOs face uncertainties about financial returns from such investments, owing to a host of technological and market-related factors, which impact the enablement of such 4G-LTE MoBro services. These challenges are clearly evident in the Indian market. Firstly, 4G-LTE subscribers in the rural India contribute to less than one-third of the overall market size. Secondly, India performs poorly in terms of minimum capacity requirements of the 4G-LTE MoBro services. Thirdly, the rise in per-user consumption of MoBro data does not translate into a similar rise in the MNOs’ revenue. Fourthly, the socio-economic-geographic segregation of India into twenty-two administrative zones (referred to as telecom circles) add to the complexities in the capital investment decisions of MNOs. To address the above challenges, we model various cost and profitability scenarios of a hypothetical MNO providing universal 4G-LTE deployment across the twenty-two telecom circles in India using the available spectrum bands. Our proposed model is firmly established in the “network investment economics” framework for telecom innovations. We adopt a technology diffusion-based approach to forecast the 4G-LTE subscribers in India. We focus on the requirements of 4G-LTE MoBro infrastructure investments, including the spectrum selection decisions by MNOs, and show that, for valuation of the spectrum, the policymakers in India need to take into account the potential of the spectrum in terms of financial returns to an MNO deploying 4G-LTE using that spectrum, as against merely valuing the spectrum based on primarily the technical characteristics of its carrier frequency and benchmarks of prior spectrum auction prices in a particular telecom circle. Finally, we also show that a nationwide 4G-LTE network, which is universal, inclusive, and adhering to the global standards in terms of service quality, can be financially lucrative for MNOs, if enabled by appropriate policies instituting collaborative frameworks for infrastructure sharing, and price rationalization of spectrum bands across the twenty-two telecom circles.