"The business objective of TATA is to win 100 million users by 2011, which means that our network needs to accommodate to the rapidly increasing volume of traffic. Fortunately, Huawei can help us realize this objective as expected."
--Brij Mathur, General Manager, Tata Indicom
Tata Teleservices is the newest pan-India mobile operator. Its goal was to break into the rapidly-expanding India mobile market and compete against the strong, entrenched suppliers. This is a tall order, but with a technology edge and the help of Huawei, the Indicom brand became the fastest growing service in its first four years of service.
Background
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) advocates a completely open market and full competition, resulting in especially fierce competition in the mobile communications market. Under the guidance of the TRAI, the communication service charges have rapidly declined, which gave rise to the rapid growth of the mobile communications market of India. To Tata, this market represented a window of opportunity for it to grow into a mobile communications giant and outdo its rivals. Tata Teleservices became the newest telecom service provider in India. The company offers integrated telecom solutions to its customers under the Tata Indicom brand, and uses the latest CDMA 3G EV-DO technology for its wireless network. Tata Teleservices along with Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited operates in more than 4000 towns across 20 regional “circles”. Tata Indicom has a customer base of over 25 million.
Challenges
Seizing the opportunity had the wonderful result that, in October, 2007, Tata Indicom hit 20 million subscribers. This was just 4 years after its founding and was the fastest growth recorded by any of the Indian operators. Even though the Indian mobile market is second only to China as the fastest growing market in the world, this was a daunting accomplishment. The explosive growth had a major impact on the TDM-based mobile core network deployed by Tata. Having multiple network layers, complicated routes, the small capacity of a single office, and too many offices on the network impacted Tata’s ability to handle high subscriber growth and respond to the decline in ARPU caused by the hyper-competitive marketplace.
In addition to the growth in subscribers, Tata also dealt with a uniquely Indian problem. Diwali, the most important festival of India, is celebrated by all segments of the population. It was not unusual for the mobile networks in big cities to congest in multiple office directions, sometimes causing the entire network to break down during Diwali. If Tata could provide uninterrupted services in spite of the impact of the traffic peak at Diwali, it would win a key battle to build its brand image.
The final challenge arises from market pressures versus the physical terrain in India. If a company intends to win over users, it must be able to put the new network into commercial use earlier than others. However, restricted by the natural conditions and external environments of India, the construction of infrastructure, including the communications network, can take several years.
Partnership with Huawei: Seize opportunities with a technology edge
Tata decided that if they had a high quality network with better performance than its rivals, this would be the key to success. This network had to be able to support rapid growth from masses of subscribers, but it must also have at least 50% reduction of CAPEX and OPEX, and be quickly placed into service. Clearly, the existing network could not meet any of these goals.
In order to meet the goals, Tata planned to implement the All-IP network to construct a highly competitive network that meets the long-term strategic requirements of Tata by optimizing the network topology, cutting down the network cost, and enhancing the network efficiency to adapt to the macro trends of the evolution to the All-IP network and the information and communication technology (ICT) convergence.
Distributed Network for Capacity and Reliability
With the most urgent need in the main population centers, Tata decided to began by swapping the core networks in New Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Utilizing a very competitive selection process that weighed not just the equipment but also the overall capabilities of the vendor, Tata selected Huawei to provide an All-IP softswitch distributed networking architecture. This solution provides a number of capabilities which use transmission resources very efficiently, which was very important to Tata which leases most of its long-distance transmission resources. The All-IP network is easy and convenient to manage, featuring centralized maintenance which leads to a considerable reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO). New Delhi is a good example. Expanding the seven TDM mobile switch centers (MSCs) would require not only that new MSC nodes be added, but also a more complicated network topology, more expenses on accessory facilities (including the construction cost and O&M cost of equipment rooms, power supply, and cooling systems). Using Huawei systems, the New Delhi network was simplified to only 4 MSCs. CAPEX per-line decreased significantly, both in construction cost and the investment in accessory facilities. OPEX also deceased due to the reduction in sites, power consumption and personnel time.
To tackle the challenge of the traffic surge during Diwali, Huawei provided a solution based on highly reliable mobile softswitches and professional Core Network services. Even though the Tata network only needed 3 cabinets for a softswitch to support 3 million users it can easily handle the traffic peak at Diwali when a billion Indians celebrate the occasion. In addition to ensuring that the softswitch has adequate capacity, Tata and Huawei set up a network planning team to evaluate the special traffic environment and special user behavior at Diwali, adopting advanced automatic modeling technology to help Tata optimize the network. This planning, plus the professional O&M tools and the network resource adjustment strategy ensured smooth operation.
Huawei, well known for its fast response and delivery, optimized the entire process from the planning design, supply chain, and logistics to engineering and installation and system commissioning to address the special problems of India. Huawei created a high-quality Core Network delivery solution suitable for the renovation of Tata’s network. Thus, in spite of challenging conditions, Huawei delivered a high-quality solution in a very short time, beating the customer’s expectations.
Flexible Capacity with Lower Costs
Tata has a cost-effective mobile network of high quality that runs normally despite surging numbers of users. In New Delhi, for example, by only expanding the capacity in existing cabinets, Tata can meet user requirements for the next five years.
Building and placing into service an All-IP Core Network in a few months instead of several years gained time for Tata to overtake its rivals and resulted in successful network performance during Diwali in November 2007, helping to reinforce Tata’s brand reputation.
The new Core Network also resulted in substantial TCO savings by reducing required equipment space by 55% and average power consumption by 60%. The total OPEX reduction was more than 50%.
Simple, Reliable and Expandable Network
While the Indian mobile communications market will continue to grow at fantastic rates and competition will become even more fierce, Tata is well positioned to continue its aggressive expansion. By choosing Huawei as its partner to create an All-IP network, Tata gained valuable time and created a simple, reliable and expandable network that positions it for the future.
