Indian operator SSTL focuses on data innovation

GUANGZHOU, China – While India has seen a rapid increase in the number of subscribers on its networks, the operators delivering service have not seen the same increases in revenues, said Vsevolod Rozanov, President and CEO of Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), speaking during the CDMA World Forum 2011 recently held here.
As such, Systema Shyam, a joint venture between Russia’s Sistema and Shyam Group of India, is focusing on growing its business based on data revenues. “Cheap voice is not interesting to us,” Rozanov said, noting that every voice operator in India is starved for spectrum. Instead the operator, which has CDMA licenses in all 22 circles in India, is focusing on select voice services and innovations around its data offerings. The company, which does business under the MTS India brand, plans to offer prepaid data and has a variety of devices, including premium dongles and Wi-Fi routers. Interestingly, MTS is allowing its subscribers free browsing on websites, including Wikipedia and Yahoo.
About 10% of Indian people use the Internet and only about 1% have Internet connections, Rozanov said. “Internet to India didn’t come yet. … It will come and when it will come, it will be wireless,” he said, commenting that building a fixed infrastructure for broadband services would be much too expensive.
The CDMA operator has a 1.25 megahertz channel for voice operations and a 1.25 megahertz channel for data operations, and because of its limited spectrum has launched CDMA EV-DO Rev. B Phase 2, the first such launch, earlier this year, Rozanov noted. Phase 2 can provide speeds up to 4.9 Megabits per second in a single frequency carrier. The operator offers high-speed mobile broadband services in 150 towns across India. The operator also plans to target small and medium-sized businesses with cloud-based services.