India Looks to Wireless Future India could have 13 million WiMax subscribers in six years
Red Herring Magazine July 4, 2006 http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=17466&hed=India%20Looks%20to%20Wireless%20Future India will have 13 million WiMax subscribers by 2012, up from today's 1.5 million, according to research released this week by the U.S.-based Maravedis Research and India-based Tonse Telecom. "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. "The resulting ecosystem and opportunities will make India a dream destination for vendors and investors." The projected growth in wireless broadband is tied to the fact that wired telephone services in India haven't kept pace with demand. Over 70 percent of households in India have no access to wired lines. In addition to being limited to about 300 cities and towns, broadband landline service, launched in 2005, is still expensive and PC penetration is low. There are some 15 million PC users in India compared with more than 100 million mobile phone users. WiMax, a wireless high-speed service, can help fill the gap. "There is huge potential for broadband wireless Internet and voice-over-IP services in India because there are still more than 600,000 villages with no basic communications services," said Mr. Pai. Local players are seizing the opportunity. Bharti TeleVentures, Reliance, BSNL, and VSNL have all acquired licenses in the 3.3 GHz range, the spectrum that's being used for mobile data. Each of the operators is conducting trials and modest commercial deployments of WiMax. "Larger deployments will start to materialize in early 2007, but volumes in the millions will take a few years," said Adlane Fellah, a senior analyst with Maravedis, who is another co-author of the report. "The planned release of additional spectrum will be critical to this." Spectrum Shortage Shortage of spectrum is a serious obstacle for massive adoption of broadband wireless and WiMax in India. License holders need at least 20 MHz of spectrum to support wide-scale deployments and to build profitable businesses, but most operators currently have 12 MHz or less, Mr. Pai said. Talks are under way between telcos and government agencies, including India's departments of space and defense, to release defense-occupied spectrum for civil commercial use. Another barrier is cost. 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. Bangalore-based Telsima's products combine system-on-a-chip design with smart antenna and radio frequency systems. The approach helps to lower the costs of deploying wireless services in dense urban, suburban, and rural environments. Beceem Communications, another Bangalore startup, 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. ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 antunes at uh dot edu Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
