Is China slowing down the progress of large-scale 4G deployments so as to favor ongoing development of homegrown TD-LTE standard?

Now thats what I called a conscious collective effort.  - As per Dow Jones Newswires reports that cited  Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei, China won't launch commercial fourth-generation mobile services nationwide until 2014. Mobile operators worldwide are upgrading to 4G networks to fuel growth. 4G services offer faster data speeds and higher revenue per user than the more widely available third-generation services. China will need three to five years to start large-scale commercial use of 4G services, slowed by the country's promotion of a 4G technology called TD-LTE that isn't yet fully mature. Local operator China Mobile Ltd. is likely to adopt the TD-LTE standard for 4G services but China may also allow carriers to adopt a different standard. "It is also obvious that the Chinese government doesn't want to adopt a 4G service too soon as that would disrupt the carriers' efforts to develop 3G services" further, Miao was cited as saying. China's government and its three big mobile operators, China Mobile, China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. and China Telecom Corp., invested billions of yuan to build 3G networks after China launched 3G services in 2009. Given this fact I appreciate the decision of Chinese government not to be played by the Vendors who deliberately intent to reduce life-cycle of technology. They come up with marginal upgrades, create hype and sell the equipments to operators who are stuck with huge investments.

Indian government plans to fund Rural broadband connectivity through USO fund

The broadband penetration in India has not been upto the expectation. The rural broadband penetration is even worse and hence in the Budget for 2011-12, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has finalised a plan to provide Rural Broadband Connectivity to all 2,50,000 Panchayats in the country in three years. As per Economic Times news the government of India will soon invite bids from telecom firms to provide broadband services in rural areas of the country under which the service providers get subsidy from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund. Department of Telecom (DoT) will come out with tender for rural wireless broadband through USO Fund by the end of this month and is likely to cover 60,000 without giving the timeframe to achieve the target. 

USO Funds was set-up in 2002 in order to provide mobile services and broadband connectivity in rural and remote areas of the country. As on December 31, 2010, the fund has a total of Rs 13,789.28 crore. 

Under the 'Rural Wireline Broadband' scheme of USOF, a total of 2,61,413 broadband connections and 2,506 kiosks have been provided till January 31, 2011 in the rural and remote areas of the country against a target of 8,88,832 connections and 28,762 kiosks by 2014.  Last week, President Pratibha Patil had launched DoT-USOF's pilot project Sanchar Shakti, which aims to provide useful information to women, about health, social issues and government schemes over their mobile phones. The scheme, which is funded by DoT's USOF, is for mobile value-added services and information and communication technologies (ICT) related livelihood skills for Women's Self Help Groups. As per the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), rural broadband connectivity will cost around Rs 18,000 crore.

Mobile gambling to be the fastest growing Mobile entertainment product sector - Juniper

 A new report from Juniper Research on Mobile Entertainment market has interesting findings. Some key findings from the report include:

• Despite the erosion of the ringtone market, mobile music will remain the largest single contributor to mobile entertainment content revenues over the next five years
• The fastest growing product sector will be mobile gambling, followed by social media
• On a regional basis, Far East & China will continue to account for the largest share of revenues, followed by Western Europe

The report valued the Mobile Entertainment market at $33bn for last year, rising to $54bn in 2015 - driven by the continuing escalation in smartphone adoption and the attendant increase in downloads of consumer-oriented applications. The report observed that the combination of app stores and smartphones had created an unprecendented level of awareness and usage of services such as social media, games, video and streamed music. At the same time, the transition from the "walled garden" business model to an open mobile Internet had created greater opportunities for D2C players in niche areas such as gambling and adult services.

China 3G subscriber base touches 50 million - Growing at more than 4 million per month!!

Three years after the networks first launched their commercial services, the number of 3G subscribers in China has passed the 50 million mark. At the end of May 2010, the country had 20 million 3G subscribers, and 38.64 million by the end of October 2010. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) expects the numbers to surge to 150 million by the end of this year. According to statistics from China Mobile, it had a total of 22.6 million 3G users in January, while China Unicon had 15.47 million and China Telecom attracted 13.64 million. These telecom carriers now have a large number of subsidized 3G phones available to attract users. 

Verizon all set to drop unlimited data plan offer on iPhone

More and more operators are becoming allergic to Unlimited data plans on wireless. Verizon Wireless, USA based operator,  who has only just started selling the Apple iPhone,  is already planning changes to the tariff plans it offers to its customers. Specifically, it intends to cancel the headline grabbing "unlimited" mobile data tariff as soon as this summer and switch to a tiered pricing model. The mobile network operator currently offers an unlimited data option for US$30 per month, although it reserves the right to throttle the download speeds for heavy users in areas where network congestion is high. That compares to the offer from rival iPhone seller, AT&T - who charge US$25 for 2Gb of data traffic per month.