150 Indian cities to have WiMAX in 90 days

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Some 150 cities in India would have wireless broadband through WiMAX technology in just 90 days once the 20 MHz spectrum is allotted at the base reserve price of 250 million dollars (Rs. 1,010 crores) to four operators in each circle.

Each operator could serve 15 to 20 million subscribers with good quality service. But much would depend upon early implementation of the proposed auction of the spectrum for the service.

This perspective emerged at the WiMAX India 2009 conference being organized by Bharat Exhibitions. “India is ready for broadband experience” said C.S. Rao, chairman of WiMAX Forum India. “Wireless is the key to broadband” he said recalling the projection in the President’s address to Parliament setting 100 million subscriber target for broadband by 2014 and 20 million by 2012. The fact of India having a social demographics of over 600 million young people underlined the need for rapid roll out of broadband in the country, Rao pointed out.

Despite this national vision for broadband penetration, why the ground level progress so slow was, asked several telecom experts participating in the day long discussion. Telecom experts contrasted the huge push in cellular phone subscription to 14 million per month in June with the total users of a mere 6 million in broadband.

“Against over 40 percent penetration of cellphone at 450 million, Internet penetration is just 0.6 percent” regretted Naresh Ajwani, secretary, Internet Service Providers Association of India. “Roll out the bidding for spectrum. The delay is stopping India from developing” he said.

On the issue of poor broadband penetration despite huge WiMAX potential, Bharti Airtel group CTO Jagbir Singh found that price points “are not good and scalability is an issue.” He and several other experts who participated called for early conducting of the spectrum auction to get the WiMAX based broadband penetration roll out fast.

Jagbir Singh also expressed concern over backhaul costs that have become “a huge issue”. Several other speakers agreed with him on the backhaul issue, especially the problems being faced by service providers in getting right of way permissions from local authorities. “RoW cost should be near zero if rural broadband is to be affordable”, he added.

“Backhaul cost is killing us” revealed Mallikarjuna Rao, Head technology and network planning Aircel, adding that government intervention was needed to bring down the high costs of carrying and Internet bandwidth if broadband were to be available at affordable price.

On how operators and government could work together to reduce total costs to improve affordability for rural customers, A. Sethuraman, executive director of Huawei, a leading global telecom equipment company, listed several factors like smaller footprints, natural cooling, advanced technologies to save energy, could reduce the huge operational costs.

Converged platforms putting together optic fibre and microwave and use of multiple technologies in the same equipment were some of the available options. User end costs were also going down with many PCs and laptops now becoming WiMAX embedded. “New innovations in terminals combining WiFi and WiMAX” were also coming up he disclosed.

Sethuraman, Executive director, Huawei Telecommunication India also disclosed that a new technology by his company “CSR initiative” for rural India was available especially useful in connectivity in education.

WiMAX Forum has over 500 members. It sees India as a large market. IIT-Delhi hosts a WiMAX applications laboratory. That technology and equipment for commercial operation of WiMAX was already available, was underlined in the presentation that Motorola India country head for home and networks mobility business, Subhendu Mohanty gave at the conference.

He found great [prospects for future broadband penetration in the rising sales of PCs and laptops. Notebook growth has crossed 114 per cent last year. Worldwide 133 million broadband subscribers were expected by 2012 of which 70 per cent would use mobile WiMAX devices. “WiMAX is here, LTE would be available by next year” he revealed. LTE is a high speed wireless on GSM platform for cellphone services, faster than 3G. “WiMAX is a step towards LTE”, he said.

As many as 25 applications on WiMAX were already available. Low cost chipsets “critical for India” roll out of WiMAX were being provided by his company. He claimed “total cost advantage’ in using WiMAX for broadband expansion.

Calling for a “faster auction” of 3G and WiMAX spectrum, Neeraj Sonker, vice-president, Tata Communications defined the challenge in wireless broadband was to make business plan viable at an average revenue per user of four to five dollars per month. The equipment and technology must be looked at “differently” for India operations to make WiMAX affordable. The roll out should be such as to enable seamless transfer from WiMAX to EVDO(the cellular platform for triple play connectivity).

Through wireless broadband it was now becoming possible for housewives to work from home for providing many services notably as call centre operators, Sonker said listing several new openings that WiMAX was offering to broader user audience.

There should be 27.5 million WiMAX users by 2012, according to Bharat Exhibition Managing Director Sasidharan, organizers of the conference.