Breakthrough cellular technology can deliver viable mobile voice & data services to remote communities in India and Asia – now

“Our leap forward in cost-effective wireless service over satellite enables mobile network operators to reach out and connect the remote community solutions still outside coverage, profitably. These communities can quickly reap the economic rewards that wireless service brings with it” Mike Fitzgerald, CEO, Altobridge

Mumbai, India, 12 May, 2009 – Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) across India and South Asia are reaching out across their respective regions to deliver wireless services where, until now, communities have been without even the most basic forms of telephony. The technology now exists to enable them to do so, profitably - and rapidly.

At India & South Asia Com in Mumbai, leading provider of wireless solutions for cutting the cost of communications, Altobridge, will be delivering its exclusive paper: “Cost-Effective Wireless Communications in Remote Parts of India & South Asia”, in which company Sales Director, Colm Jones, will discuss how MNOs can solve the technical, operational and business issues of delivering mobile services to their most remote, low-population user groups by using the world’s most cost-effective remote mobile communications solution – ‘The Altobridge Remote Community Solution’.

In India, less than 30% of the 1.16 billion population live in urban areas, leaving a rural population of immense proportions. Whilst less than 38 million fixed phone lines are in use across the whole country, the growth in mobile phone penetration since deregulation has been phenomenal, with 362 million mobile phones now in use with an ARPU of US$5. Combined fixed and mobile phone density, however, remains low at around 35 phones per 100 people.

Many of those without phones are spread amongst the 10,000 small, remote, rural communities in need of communications and whose only hope, technologically, is on mobile solutions combined with satellite backhaul. However, to ensure an effective ROI on any deployment, MNOs need to adopt significant changes in their core network.

This is where Indian and Asian MNOs can benefit from the technologies Altobridge has developed, which will enable them to reach out immediately with the most cost-effective solution to deliver mobile communications to these hundreds of millions of people.

The Remote Community Solution from Altobridge combines its patented Split Architecture with a unique Local Connectivity function. The Split Architecture creates an on-demand use of expensive satellite bandwidth, which restricts usage to times when only revenue-generating traffic is occurring. The Local Connectivity element switches ‘local calls’ locally at the community base station, eliminating unnecessary backhaul onto the core network transmission links. This, in turn, improves call quality by removing double satellite hops.

Mike Fitzgerald, Altobridge CEO, said, “A further compelling aspect of our solution is our Operational Model, which bundles our unique wireless offering with new and installed Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs) and benefits from the existing local teams of installation and support professionals already on the ground and serving remote communities.

“The Indian National Satellite System, which comprises six satellites, supports 33,000 VSATs across the country and is a major asset to the whole challenge of delivering services to India’s remote regions. These installed VSATs can combine perfectly with the Altobridge solution to deliver cost-effective services.

“VSATs are very low cost and today exist in their tens of thousands, deployed around the world. They are, however, very much under-utilised in small remote communities throughout developing and emerging countries like India. MNOs have already identified this installed base as the ideal, cost-effective means of rapidly extending their GSM services to remote communities, and ‘bundling’ GSM and VSAT at remote locations enables ‘Sathaul’ - base stations backhauled over satellite – to provide operators with an effective and practical means of delivering GSM services where they would otherwise not be viable,” Fitzgerald concluded.