Professional Documents
Culture Documents
VNL WP Telecom Rural India
VNL WP Telecom Rural India
VNL WP Telecom Rural India
720 million potential mobile The rural consumer in India cannot pay the $50 per
users await. month typical of London, Tokyo and Sydney. Nor can
A
they pay the $7-10 per month typical of Delhi and
s the developed mobile markets all over the
Mumbai. But research and experience shows that they
world approach saturation, the industry has
can and will pay around $3 per month today – even
begun to consider ‘the next billion’ users. These are the
before the impact of communications increases their
rural populations living beyond the reach of traditional
ability to pay.
communications networks of any kind.
Rural India is a prime example of the opportunity: television penetration levels of 26% and growing).
{
1,500
“You CAN’T get there from here.” The challenges of rural India
class ready to deliver services at the local level. Cheap • Power challenges – Most of rural India is not
handsets are available and, unlike urban locations, space served by the power grid. Some areas may get ‘ag-
for Base Stations is plentiful. ricultural power’ – two hours in the morning and
evening – but even this is the exception.
When fuel can be afforded and delivered, power
“The cost of passive infrastructure is tends to come from diesel generators. The com-
bination of poor fuel quality and poor generator
enormous and telecom companies
maintenance severely limits the life of any generator.
should consider the infrastructural
challenges in the rural areas.” • Revenue challenges – Rural India can pay for
– SANJEEV AGA, CHAIRMAN mobile services, but only around $3 per month. The
CII National Committee on Telecom and Broadband
cost base of any solution has to be geared to these
ARPU levels.
As powerful as these market drivers may be, the inhibi-
• Skills challenges – There are no trained telecom
tors are even more formidable.
engineers and few people can read or write. This
makes the installation and maintenance of GSM
The obstacles to providing profitable mobile services
networks highly challenging.
to rural India (and similar rural populations all over
the world) come from two main sources: the inherent • Access challenges – These are extremely remote
constraints of the market – its geography, economy and communities, served by poor roads and no other
skill levels; and the inherent limitations of current GSM significant infrastructure.
technology, processes and models.
1%
Today’s GSM is not ready to serve rural India.
0
North Western Asia Pacific Eastern Africa & Latin
America Europe Europe Middle East America
The limits of traditional GSM estimated to burn about 1.8 billion litres of diesel
each year. Fuel quality, transport challenges and
GSM, as we know it today, was designed for urban and
the demands of generator maintenance make this
suburban locations in developed markets. It’s a general- power source unsustainable for rural GSM deploy-
purpose network entirely unsuited to the unique chal- ments.
lenges of serving rural and remote communities.
• Skills demands – A typical GSM Base Station
deployment process takes around three months
“New cellphone makers and service from planning to commissioning, and involves
providers understand that they can dozens of people including radio network planners,
site acquisition teams, site engineers, civil engineers,
make money by bringing cellphone
equipment vendor installation professionals and
service within reach of people who
commissioning teams from the operator.
live on $2 a day.” This supply chain can barely meet the demands
– BUSINESS WEEK, SEPT. 24 2007
of the urban mobile infrastructure. It could never
scale for the rural opportunity even if it could do so
cost-effectively (a clear impossibility). The workforce
Mapping the inherent limitations of today’s GSM to the in rural India has none of the skills necessary to
challenges of rural deployment, we can see the massive deploy and maintain today’s GSM.
gulf between the opportunity and the tools available to
• Cost demands – A typical GSM Base Station alone
seize it:
costs in the region of $100,000, before BSC and MSC
costs are factored in. Funding this capital expendi-
• Deployment demands – The typical GSM Base
ture requires the kinds of population densities and
Station includes three refrigerator-sized cabinets,
ARPU levels found only in urban areas.
mains power supply, large battery backup, dual
Rural communities simply do not justify the cost
air conditioning units, a tower or roof site and
of today’s GSM infrastructure – and no government
backhaul capability. All this is housed in some kind
subsidy can fill the gap.
of building – either existing or built for purpose.
Just getting all of this equipment to a rural
community multiplies the cost of deployment – Taken together, the challenges inherent to the rural op-
before provisioning, civil engineering, radio plan- portunity and the limitations and demands of tradition-
ning, testing and maintenance is factored in. al GSM create a circle that is impossible to square.
engineering of telecommunications to meet the needs • Near-Zero Maintenance – top up the batteries
of rural and remote communities. every three months; update software remotely and
perform simple swap repairs if needed.
• Low cost – a fraction of the cost of traditional $50 Ordinary Base Station
Station towers.
Driving down the threshold of viability to the $3
ARPU level requires an order of magnitude cost reduction.
To achieve this, VNL has had to: • BlueBox™ – the low-power, low-cost BTS (Base
Transceiver Station) in a box. Complete GSM Base
• Design and build our own hardware – Station functionality in a single box, including
to maximise control microwave backhaul. It comes in two capacities –
1 TRX and 2 TRX.
• Develop and test our own software –
millions of lines of code that re-creates GSM for • GreenBox™ 160i – the world’s first rural-
rural use optimized BSC (Base Station Controller). One
GreenBox™ 160i supports up to 16 BTS nodes
• Re-engineer the physical infrastructure – (WorldGSM™ Rural, Road or Village sites).
with new form factors that can be deployed by
anyone, anywhere, in days • OrangeBox™ 600i – the compact MSC (Mobile
Switching Center) for rural deployments. One Or-
• Invent a new network architecture – to support angeBox™ supports up to 6 GreenBox™ 160i nodes,
limitless scalability at low cost serving over 10,000 subscribers.(WorldGSM™ Rural,
Road or Village sites).
WorldGSM™ WorldGSM™
BlueBox™ 902 GreenBox™ 160i (BSC)
• Open Source – free and easily adapted Road Deployments use bi-directional antennas to
create a string of coverage along roads, ending in a
• Wide acceptance – by operators all over the world
BSC to connect to the main GSM network.
Expandability
Each Rural Site can support up to 500 users and each BSC can support up
to 16 1 TRX BTS nodes.
WorldGSM™
2 Rural Site
WorldGSM™
3 WorldGSM™
OrangeBox™ 600i (MSC)
4 GreenBox™ 160i (BSC)
Expandability
Each Road Site can support up to 500 users and each BSC can support up to
16 1 TRX BTS nodes.
20 km 10 km 5 km
65 km coverage corridor
Host network
Road Site
Bi-directional coverage
The WorldGSM™ Road Site uses two high-gain directional antennas that point
in opposite directions, creating a bi-directional coverage pattern.
About VNL
VNL helps mobile operators
reach rural markets profitably.
Contact VNL
E-mail: info@vnl.in
Website: www.vnl.in
Blog: blog.vnl.in
VNL INDIA
VNL, Vihaan Networks Limited
246, Phase IV, Udyog Vihar,
Gurgaon, Haryana 122 015, INDIA
Tel +91 124 4311600-609
VNL EUROPE
VNL Europe AB
Finlandsgatan
SE 164 74
Kista, SWEDEN
Tel +46 8 793 9080