BSNL to issue tender for 50,000 WiMax kiosks

New Delhi: BSNL is set to issue tenders for setting up 50,000 Common Service Centres (CSC) - ICT-enabled kiosks - across the country. This will be one of the largest deployments of WiMax in the world, reported The Economic Times.

Currently, all CSCs that are set up in the first phase used the traditional method of connecting to high-speed internet and providing other ICT services via fibre cable. The DoT has sought communication minister A Raja?s approval to allocate WiMax spectrum to BSNL for this project. It would be allocated spectrum in the 2.5 GHz frequency band for its wireless broadband foray.

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According to sources, during a recent meeting to review the status of the project, communications minister A Raja had directed BSNL to work in coordination with the department of information technology in order to ensure that the project is completed within the time frame. Following this, BSNL will meet formally with all circle heads in Delhi to address all implementation issues.

By mid-2008, BSNL also has plans for urban areas include the roll-out of WiMax services in about 70 cities across the country. The PSU will soon issue tenders estimated at about Rs 1,000 crore for this project also.

A slew of companies including Silicon Valleybased wireless manufacturers Telsima and Aperto Networks and others such as Alcatel Lucent, Airspan Networks, Prithvi Information Solutions had already expressed interest in bidding for the WiMax project in these 70 cities.

WiMax is still considered a threat to third generation mobile services. As per global industry experience, WiMax offers data speeds that are 10-30 times faster than 3G. To put this in perspective, the data speeds of 3G networks are over five times faster than those offered by 2G cellular networks that telecom companies in India.