News >> Technology >>
WiMax promises a wireless future
By agencies
|
Wednesday, 05 July 2006, 19:30 IST
BANGALORE: "In the next six years India has the potential to become one of the
top broadband wireless markets on the planet," said Sridhar Pai, co-author
of the report and chief executive of Tonse Telecom.
His remark came after the research released this week by the U.S.-based Maravedis Research and
India-based Tonse Telecom said that India will have 13 million WiMax
subscribers by 2012, up from today's 1.5 million. "The resulting ecosystem
and opportunities will make India a dream destination for vendors and
investors," he added.
WiMax, a wireless high-speed service, can help fill the gap that has been
created due to the lack of intense PC penetration in addition to being
limited to about 300 cities and towns, due to the expensive broadband
landline service. There are some 15 million PC users in India compared with
more than 100 million mobile phone users.
With more than 600,000 villages in India with no basic communications
services, the possible potential for broadband wireless Internet and
voice-over-IP services to expand is enormous.The local players are seizing
this opportunity with Bharti TeleVentures, Reliance, BSNL, and VSNL l
acquiring licenses in the 3.3 GHz range, the spectrum that's being used for
mobile data.
Starting with modest commercial deployments of WiMax, Adlane Fellah, a
senior analyst with Maravedis and co-author of the report said, "Larger
deployments will start to materialize in early 2007, but volumes in the
millions will take a few years, the planned release of additional spectrum
will be critical to this."
While the country is gearing up to the possibility of a thorough wireless
service, the shortage of spectrum is seen to be posing a difficulty. Most
operators currently have 12 MHz or less, whereas license holders will need
at least 20 MHz of spectrum to support wide-scale deployments and build
profitable businesses, Mr Pai said.
Talks are under way between telcos and government agencies, for the release
of defense-occupied spectrum for civil commercial use. Another obstacle
would be the cost with both service providers and residential end users
demand that customer equipment be priced at under $100. Indian startups,
such as Telsima and Beceem Communications, are working on this problem.
Both the Bangalore based companies have come up with unique ways of
tackling the problem. By combining a system-on-a-chip design with smart
antenna and radio frequency systems, Bangalore based Telsima has helped
lower the costs of deploying wireless services in dense urban, suburban,
and rural environments, while Beceem Communications has developed a modem
that can deliver Internet data to a laptop at 15 million bits per second.
Its engineers are now working on more efficient chips to provide
high-speed, wireless Internet access for mobile devices.