TelecomLive April-2020

Covid-2019 www.telecomlive.com 31 Telecom LIVE April 2020 larise our backhaul spectrum as well,” the spokesperson added. Rajan S Mathews, director general of COAI, said telcos would shortly engage with tower infra- structure partners to map loca- tions seeing a sudden surge in home internet consumption. Mr Mathews said phone companies are awaiting the government's go- ahead on the industry's additional spectrum needs before setting Operation CoWs into motion. “We've written to telecom sec- retary Anshu Prakash seeking additional short-term allocations of both access spectrum, primarily in the 1800 MHz band, as well as backhaul airwaves in the E and V bands,” said Mathews. “Telcos will seek approvals from local municipalities for swiftly deploying the CoWs after DoT clears the additional spec- trum requested…operators are in talks with tower partners and gear vendors to ensure adequate base stations, antennae are available for this,” Mr Mathews added. Later, Mr Mathews changed his stand stating that the operators do not need more spectrum. He also rejected fears of choked networks. “The networks have enough capacity to manage this increase and there is no reason for worry,” he said. Telcos currently use 65-70 per cent of the network capacity. In other words, they have enough additional capacity to handle the new pressure without clogging the system, he added. Also, network usage demand is being reoriented or “flattened out”. For instance, demand has fallen sharply in the central busi- ness districts because offices are closed. So there is no sudden surge in demand during peak times, which can consume 90-95 per cent of the network capacity. As a result, demand is much more uniform across the city with no sudden pressure on the network. But, the fact is that the request of Reliance Jio for allocation of additional spectrum, for this interim period, is pending with DoT. Many telcos are finding it difficult to move equipment for new sites and find it easier to upgrade the existing sites if addi- tional spectrum is allocated. Telcos though downplayed worries about any immediate jump in gear procurement costs or capex triggered by likely disrup- tion in supplies from Chinese vendors, saying the AGR pay- ments crisis has sharply reduced telco spends on network expan- sion, and recent tariff hikes by the Big 3 telcos too has cut consump- tion levels, reducing network load. Mr Mathews said, “Telcos have- n't yet seen major disruption in gear supplies following Covid-19 outbreak as there's hardly any fresh network spends happening, amid the AGR crisis.” A report said 70 per cent more people are using group video calls and are spending more time than usual watching Facebook and Instagram Live amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, voice and video calls on WhatsApp have more than doubled year- over-year in the places most impacted by the virus. India went under a three-week lockdown from March 25 to limit the spread of Covid-19. This meant work from home, remote education and entertainment, all of which is now either being transitioned to home broadband networks or onto mobile connec- tions that are concentrated in the same place. J&K: Mobile internet speed increased On March 20, 2020, the mobile internet speed in Jammu and Kashmir was increased in view of the growing demand for restora- tion of 4G services in the wake of coronavirus scare. The mobile internet speed was increased up to 256 kpbs across the union terri- tory of Jammu and Kashmir. The increased network speed would help in raising awareness of the disease in the valley where the network speed had been kept very low as a precautionary measure to stop rumour-mongering. business viability of telcos needs a balanced consideration too. Home mobile data traffic jumps 50 pc With more and more people starting to work from home in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, there has been a tremendous explosion in data usage, particu- larly video streaming, from homes. Just how the increase in data consumption has been happening can be gauged from the fact that most customers are now exhaust- ing all of their 1.5-2 GB daily data limit. Overall mobile data traffic has increased by 20 per cent, but resi- dential mobile data traffic has gone up by 50 per cent resulting in congestion in certain pockets. This is the status even after video streaming platforms started offer- ing only standard definition (SD) contents and not high definition (HD) contents, for the time being, resulting in reducing in traffic by 15 to 20 pc. To ease such congestion, telcos had requested the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to allocate additional spectrum in 850, 1800 and 2300 MHz bands for broadband coverage tempo- rarily. They had also asked for additional backhaul spectrum. But, the DoT has not taken any action so far. Cells on Wheels Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Reliance Jio Infocomm may roll out 'cells on wheels' (CoWs) to ease network congestion amid an upsurge in home internet and video services consumption because of lockdowns. A Vodafone Idea spokesperson said the company is deploying capacities across India using all means, including “addition of CoW sites” wherever appropriate. “We have also requested DoT to clear our pending applications for spectrum allocation and are hope- ful it will expedite our spectrum liberalisation requests and regu-