BANGALORE, India-After almost a year of service, radio trunking in India is starting to look promising. Once a given-up segment, the industry had 4,000 subscribers nationwide as of March. And of the 27 companies with trunking licenses, 16 have 31 systems commissioned for services in 20 cities.
The industry is adding 300 subscribers per month. While this figure would look ridiculous in comparison with the large base of cellular subscribers, it is important not to forget the huge license fees cellular providers had to pay and the dithering infrastructure costs involved for cellular buildout.
License fees for trunking were pale in comparison. As for infrastructure costs, setting up a radio trunking network is about US$0.2 million, while just the cost of the first phase of rolling out a cellular network runs the equivalent of several million dollars. This means it could take a trunking operator considerably less time to break even on its investment if things went well.
Though the potential for two-way radios is tremendous, the market remains untapped and unexplored. Currently, trunking systems have been used primarily by police departments for traffic control, fire and security services.
Low awareness of the service’s benefits is the biggest reason the service has not taken off faster. Most service providers are unanimous in their opinion that they have not put in much effort to create awareness about the benefits of trunking. “The low awareness about the service amongst the people has been a great deterrent to the growth of this service,” said Venkat Kedlaya, general manager, Land Mobile Products Sector (LMPS), Motorola Inc.
Motorola stands like a monolith in the Indian radio trunking scenario today. It sold more than half of the total systems installed last year. Among the service companies, ProCall leads the way with more than 1,400 radios on air. This largely is attributed to its success in Delhi.
Industry observers said once regulators approve trunking carriers’ interconnection to telephone lines, demand for trunked radio will increase many-fold.
