4G phones in India

As Indian operators are slowly but surely laying out 4G network, they face one specific challenge which we identified earlier. There are few 4G [LTE-TDD] based phones in the market. Most of the western phone vendors have started supporting LTE-FDD looking at European and US market. Indian operators like Reliance and Airtel realized that unlike GSM and 3G phones, they cannot depend on the market for the supply of 4G phones. They have to provide their consumers 4G phone that will work with their 4G network and that too at affordable cost. So, each operator is tying up with specific phone vendors to provide 4G phone for their consumers and predictably all the phone vendors that are being tied up, so far, are Asian. While Airtel tied up with ZTE and Huawei earlier, Reliance is tying up with Samsung to provide the 4G phones for its consumers. Mukesh Ambani's RIL announced today that it tied up with Samsung to bring branded 4G phones at Rs 5500. Albeit none of these phones support VoLTE [please check my previous post for more details on VoLTE] as yet.

ZTE's android based 4G phone. specs here

It is interesting that while western phone makers are lethargic to bring out LTE-TDD phones, all Asian phone makers are scampering to launch more 4G phones this year.
Last week in Mobile World Congress, China Mobile showcased 4 LTE-TDD phones, from brands such as HTC, LG, Huawei and ZTE[news report]
We should expect more announcement on 4G phones and deployment in the upcoming 4G World conference in India, scheduled on April at Gurgaon. You can check their website for more updates at http://www.4gworldindia.com/
Incidentally Videocon took a different path for 4G. While big operators in India picked up Chinese vendors for Equipment, Videocon tied up with Nokia Siemens for 4G-based broadband. "We intend to engage Nokia Siemens Networks as our Technology partner for our 4G network roll-out in the country Videocon Mobile Services Director and CEO Arvind Bali said in a statement. He said that going forward, the company will look to provide data service (internet) experience including Video Chat, Mobile TV, HD (high definition) TV content, digital video broadcasting etc,over its 4G network. [news report]

India one step closer to pan-India 4G adoption

Reuter reports that Indian Government has taken a decision this Monday to allow all the wireless broadband airwave holders to support voice over 4G by paying a one time fee of $306 million. This will remove the last regulatory hurdle to deploy LTE as the technology for both data and voice. Three large players, Reliance, Vodaphone and Airtel are expected to go full-steam in this year with LTE. For voice however, technology is still in the catch-up mode. Ideally, with LTE, the bearer protocol for the voice was expected to be voice over LTE. But voice over LTE still has some distance to cross before the technology can mature to substitute existing circuit-switched voice service provided by GSM. This is a case where market is moving faster than the technology.  For countries like India, who do not have large technology R&D investment in LTE or 3G wireless, market driving technology is in fact a boon. India does not need to follow a particular country (e.g. USA) or a technology, it has the freedom and latitude to follow the best of the breed. Fact is although GSMA adopted voice over LTE as the bearer protocol service for LTE technology in 2010, world's first ever commercial deployment of voice over LTE happened only in last quarter of 2012 when SK Telecom of South Korea launched the service with Ericsson and LG as the technology partner in September, 2012 [news announcement].
Operators in US and Europe have been trying with alternatives to voice over LTE as an interim solution but none of them match the spectral efficiency that VoLTE can provide. Heavyreading article provides a good summary on the alternatives that operators are trying for providing voice service over LTE. I have pasted their summary table here for those who are hard-pressed for time.
 As one can imagine, lack of clear choice impacts not only the network readiness but the handsets too. Huawei spokesperson stated last year that the aim is to bring voLTE enabled handset by 2013. Operators definitely want a single IP-based voice delivery solution, for LTE, which can simultaneously deliver voice, video and data so that it becomes credible deterrent against existing VoIP service like Skype. So there is no doubt that all the handset manufacturers would focus their resources to bring out fully voLTE capable handsets but challenge of interworking with multiple evolving technologies can be a serious hurdle. The hurdle can be somewhat reduced if the handset manufacturers work together. For a service to function smoothly, handsets from different manufacturers must agree on a single common procedure for voice call transfer, or voice/video call switch or roaming service. Some of them are part of the standard, but many are design artefacts which handset manufacturers must settle between themselves. For the first generation voLTE smartphones [from LG or ZTE] call switch quality appear to be satisfatory but power consumption appear to be on higher side [source]. Fallout of all these is, we may have to wait till the end of 2013, to see fully functional voLTE handsets from leading handset manufacturers like Samsung, Nokia or Sony-Ericsson. Indian operators have another hurdle. Indian operators have adopted LTE-TDD, as opposed to LTE-FDD that European operators adopted, following China and other Asian countries [check my previous posts]. This may mean that Indian operators may have to depend on Huawei or ZTE to bring the first set of handsets for Indian LTE voice/video consumers.Incidentally Airtel last year launched LTE multimode based Huawei smartphone, in India, that actually use 3G CS fallback alternative for voice calls [first alternative in the table]. In other words they do not support VoLTE yet.
So what does all these mean to you? If you are a technology enthusiast looking forward to buy a 4G smartphone, it means that you perhaps would like to wait till the end of the year when voLTE enabled handsets will be launched. Otherwise you are quite likely to replace your handset with another 4G handset in 2014.