Market analysis for small cells in Indian telecom industry

Abstract

India has witnessed an explosive growth in the number of mobile subscribers. With 900 million plus subscriber base, India is one of the largest markets for telecom services. The telecommunication world is characterized by rapid changes in the technology. One such upcoming trend is the deployment of small cells to augment the existing macro cell infrastructure. In this report, we have looked into the market analysis for small cells in the Indian telecom market. But the small cell market is still evolving and there are multiple uncertainties in the future which will impact the market. Analysis becomes difficult in such cases and it is not possible to forecast one likely outcome in the future. To overcome the above difficulty, we have used a method of scenario analysis. An industry scenario is an internally consistent view of industry s future structure. An industry scenario is not a forecast but one possible future structure. The method begins by identifying independent uncertainties that are appropriate for constructing scenarios. These are called scenario variables. The next step is to identify the causal factors behind these scenario variables. The next step is to specify the different assumptions to be made about each scenario variable. We exclude the scenarios which are not internally consistent. A set of remaining industry scenarios are analyzed to study the range of possible future industry structures. We have presented four likely scenarios and how they will impact the small cell market in India. The target audience for this report is Indian telecom operators and various players in the small cell segment. Indian operators can review various scenarios listed in the report and plan small cell deployment accordingly. The companies working in small cell segment can estimate overall potential of the Indian market and plan their market entry accordingly. The method outlined in this report can be applied to study small cell market in any other country since most of the scenario variables are generic and will remain valid for small cell deployment.