LTE Price plans - SingTel, SH, M1

I saw the recent update from Yahoo on iPhone price plans and I believe this is bundled with LTE data. If I see standalone BBOM plans from SingTel, the prices are 59.90 per 10GB. Which means the LTE data is valued at ~ SGD 6 / GB and the typical speeds are ~ 3.4 - 12.0 Mbps

Looking at 3G plans, for speeds of 1.4-3.7 Mbps, and the cost per GB is ~ SGD 3.

Now the question is that the industry boasted a lot that with LTE prices set to drop as the cost to TELCO's will be much cheaper in comparison with legacy 2G/3G network. LTE is an all-ip flat network and supposed to deliver 1GB of data for > USD 1. Back in 2009, Ericsson came with the business case/whitepaper to deliver 1GB for 1EUR. I saw similar paper from them and Huawei recently in some of the user forums.

So now the question is is it our TELCO's are running such a non-optimized network so their costs are substantially higher?
Or is it their profit margins are higher compared to other world telco's?

If LTE data could be delivered for $1 that means the operating margins are close to 70% for our TELCO's. That' assuming people use the bundled data completely. So in any case I see some good margins for the telcos on LTE but bad deal to the customers. So iPhone5 users, beware and if you can, hold back to your 3G plans. Let the heavy users go to LTE and bundled with the lower plan levels the network should have some free space in the near future and addresses the current congestion. (I am not hoping SingTel,SH,M1) to take any action to resolve by putting more capacity.

Good summary on TD-LTE

Good summary presentation here.

This was shared during the LTE Summit_2011.

http://www.hettingconsulting.com/new-td-lte-presentation-available-61-5.html

I was told, that Bharti (India) will be looking to launch LTE within this year. Actually, the biggest issue I see today is the device availability and spectrum. I am quite optimistic about the Mobile Broadband story in India. However the volume may not be high and it'll be used primary in urban/metro areas.
Rural areas are still afar from any 'real need' for internet at homes. Indians tend to 'speak' rather than 'chat' or 'sms'. So the current 2G network meets the needs. However for LTE/Data SP's & Vendors need to be creative to push to rural areas.

May be Indian version of "taobao" or amazon :)

M1 to launch LTE commercially..

Source: ZDNet

Hurray.. M1 did a great job. While all the guys (competitors, analysts and rest) were thinking that next Q1 is the period when all the action will be, they calmly announced the news.

In the initial phase it'll be only for CBD area and by next year Q1 cover the island. One significant diff is the positioning. I think given the data crunch, SP's will be targeting high value customers/enterprises. So it's no surprise that the target audience are enterprises now.

However moving forward, I'd still expect M1 to be the cost leader with cheap data offerings. If we see the recent promo for Home Fiber Broadband, $29 for 50 Mbps became a huge hit. This is the same price point where Singtel & Starhub offering their entry/mid level services.

I think M1'll try to repeat the same in mobile data space too. Slowly migrate the high value customers to LTE and offer 3G at much cheaper prices..:)

M1 Singapore will offer commercial LTE Q1-2012

Source: M1 website

M1 announced that they will be offering commercial LTE as early as Q1-2012. I believe both SingTel & Starhub will be offering LTE in 2012 and if you are hoping to enjoy speeds up to 300Mbps by next year I've to say sorry to you. I am not very optimistic about LTE or higher mobile speeds in Singapore at least for the near future. It is quite similar to NG-NBN. Today the fiber rollout is almost 90% done but if we see the % switched to fiber that is less than 5%. Reason is Cost and requirement.

End of the day people subscribe higher speeds when they need it. Today without doubt higher bandwidth is used for gaming, p2p or video stuff. The common man doesn't really require dozens of mega bits or hundreds of mega bits right now. For me I am very happy with my 10Mbps connection which is used mainly for voip or video chat as well as normal browsing.

Anyway more info about M1 is they've awarded the contract to Huawei and the value is worth 280 million over 5 years. If my wild guess is correct M1 awarded as Managed services. That's the only way they can chalk up such high amount. If this is correct, then we'll slowly see Managed Services entering in to Singapore Telco market.

This is significant because as of now we see very little managed services in APAC region. Bharti pioneered this model in India and we all know the success story. Globe is venturing in to it right now and once Singapore opt for it within few years Indonesia, Thailand and rest will follow the suite (be it due to SingTel influence of singapore influence).This will help Telco's to reduce costs but not very good for engineers working with them :|

Also a bit surprised that NSN (Nokia) lost the contract. Currently M1 Core is NSN while the radio network is by Huawei. My understanding is M1 not very happy with Huawei as Huawei prioritizing  all new features for Starhub (Starhub is completely build by Huawei) and M1 wanted to keep NSN for their strategic advantage. So nor M1 awarding to Huawei means either they managed to get some commitment or wonderful 'cost' quote.
Given the fact that Starhub can offer much more business to Huawei the former assumption may not be valid and more likely that M1 managed to get a bargain. Who knows we may well see some M&A activity here too :)

SK Telecom drops WiMAX in favor of LTE

Source: Light Reading

Surprising to hear this news as SK is one of the early adopters and pushing very hard for WiBro. Now it seems SK too joining the LTE crowd. Personally I'd still think WiMAX is better for Fixed Wireless instead of running cables to the home and using a Wi-Fi router. The problem is WiMAX chip is not as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi.

LTE Commercial availability in the world

Source: Light Reading

Below is a table I've copied from Light Reading. I've added another column which is Cost/GB. While I agree this is not the best way to measure, I opted for it due to the relatively easy way to get some feel.

For unlimited plans I used 20GB which is the 70 percentile of typical HSDPA plan. Also the price plan is dependent on the actual throughput and the coverage. So please take the values with a perspective

* Verizon offers @ 8/GB

* TeliaSonera offers @ 2.99/GB in Sweden.

In Singapore we can subscribe to the 14.4 Mbps plan ~ SGD 50.00 or USD 38.53. If I apply the same ratio as above,

* Cost is @ 1.92/GB.

Of course if we compare the GPRS speeds from Malaysia or some other developing world the cost / GB will be much more lower. But what I am trying to compare is the cost / GB between similar technologies. Note that the commercially available networks can go a maximum of 80 Mbps theoretically, but in reality offers less than 10Mbps. In Singapore we can safely get 5 Mbps average throughput on a laptop which is pretty decent in my experience. 

As usual comments are welcome.