300,000,000 connections at stake in rural India
- Published: 08 July 2018 08 July 2018
625,000 villages are being connected with fiber by the remarkable Bharatnet, on track to complete in 2019. One to five Wi-Fi hotspots in each area (GP) will offer services including banking and e-gov for eight cents (U.S.) per day to $1.50/month. These "Common services centres" will often be run by "Village level entrepreneurs," perhaps as many as 100,000.
DOT's goal is 500,000 deployed in 2018 under a light licensing procedure. 43,000 are already in place and 300,000 more on the way. Some will be solar-powered.
This is the largest Internet access program on earth, originally conceived by Sam Pitroda in the government of Dr. Mammohan Singh. It is a credit to the government building it.* Telcos are also connecting; Bharti has 30,000 cells planned. Reliance Jio, now with 4G to 96% of Indians, will raise that to 99%. Jio has better coverage than most of the major Europeans, all state of the art 4G LTE.
The big four telcos now are demanding a delay and a huge increase in costs. "Establishing public WiFi networks without licence will be illegal being in violation of the Indian Telegraph Act 1885."
Datang, like the Tang dynasty that inspired it, exits with remarkable achievements. The Tang Dynasty introduced woodblock printing and many of the first manuscripts. The Tang poets remain admired after a millennium. Datang has played a crucial role in wireless since developing the TD-SCDMA standard before 2007*. That was extended to 4G TD-LTE, which is the basis in turn for much of mid-band 5G. In fact, when the technology was developed for wireless in the 3.5 GHz band, it was called TD-LTE.
I didn't believe it until I double-checked the figures. Telefonica Spain added 500,000 homes passed by fibre to the home in Q1 2018 to reach 19.7M. Three months later, they are almost certainly over 20M, over 75% of Spain. They are now making more money per customer (EBITDA,) seeing less churn, and reducing operating expenses on the new network. The financial results were so favorable the Brazilian subsidiary, VIVO, is also adding 7M. VIVO's total will be 14M by 2020. 
Xavi is riding to the rescue after Free lost 19,000 broadband subscribers in Q1, an almost inconceivable result after 16 years of success. He's bringing back some of the original team, including legendary engineer Rani Assaf. They have work to do: opening Italy & Ireland, transitioning from 4G to ?, and dealing with invigorated competitors. Even Bouygues seems to be coming back.