Event

WiMAX India 2008

The changing face of Internet connectivity in the country was clearly demonstrated during WiMAX India 2008. By Pratap Vikram Singh and Malabika Sarkar

From L-R: Soumitra Sana, Country President, Motorola India & Managing Director, Motorola Software Group's India Design Center; Jagbir Singh, Group CTO, Mobility, Bharti Airtel Limited; Shashi Dharan, Managing Director, Bharat Exhibitions; RN Prabhakar, Member,Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; PK Garg, Former Wireless Advisor to Govt. of India and member, Radio Regulations Board and Arpita Pal Agrawal, Associate Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers

The panel in different sessions discussed the aspects, changes needed and the challenges that the industry faces in facilitating the deployment and usage of WiMAX in India.

Delivering the key note address at the conference Soumitra Sana, India President, Motorola, stressed upon the fact that the WiMAX is changing the way that the telecommunications industry connects people. “It is placing the world on the threshold of a total transformation in communications,” he said. During this event Motorola also displayed its WiMAX Forum certified base station and different types of CPEs. 

“In days to come, Indian telecommunications services providers will witness better and enhanced services,” said R.N. Prabhakar, Member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). He added, “In India, it is essential to make such services affordable to a wider section of the public at a reasonable cost. The next phase of expansion of mobile services is going to be in the rural areas. Telecom policies should encourage service providers to push deeper into the interior and develop business models for offering rural service.”

According to the attendees from the telecom industry of this one day conference, the advantage of WiMAX—a wireless access technology with high frequency enabling triple play on personal computers, notebooks and other customer end devices—is that it is the most cost-effective, fastest and easiest-to-deploy option in the market today.

While WiMAX and 3G complement each other, cost will not be the only determining factor in the choice of either technology as the quality of the service will also be an important factor. “Today the cost of accessing the Internet in India is as high as $10.5 per month. Thanks to this, the Internet penetration level is just 5.3% of the population. More Internet users are being added every year on mobile than the cumulative wired base,” said Jagbir Singh, Group CTO–Mobility, Bharti Airtel Limited. With the obvious benefits from wireless broadband in terms of costs, reliability, easy access etc., the recent WiMAX and 3G policies would help the rapid spread of wireless broadband into the interior of the country.

Assuring that WiMAX users would enjoy a good experience, C S Rao, President, WiMAX India Forum, forecasted that the cost of PCs and other customer end devices would come down further. “Already PCs are available in the range of Rs15-20,000 and in the near future this is expected to come down further,” he said. In Taiwan WiMAX-enabled notebooks were being sold for just $399 per unit.

While praising BSNL for making a rural push as it had the maximum reach in the country, Rao added that thanks to recent government initiatives, rural wireless broadband would become a reality. The rapid spread of WiMAX to provide broadband to the entire country was the theme of several other telecom experts at the conference.

The other session witnessed deliberations on how wireless broadband should be provided with a healthy ecosystem where the industry, consumers and nation as a whole are ready to have the new technology and optimize the use of the same.

Pradeep Nagpal, Deputy Director General- Strategic Planning, BSNL, said that India currently has 4.5 million broadband users and there could be a huge demand for broadband connections. Today every household requires a broadband connection. It maybe students, parents, wives, employed people—everyone has to depend on the Internet in some form or the other.

“There will be huge demand and the technologies such as 3G and WiMAX, are going to be the pioneers in satisfying this demand. Recently the WiMAX Forum certified manufacturing equipment of DTH and mobile stations, which will help to meet requirements of our network quickly. Also the equipment that will be deployed will be mobile and this will be of great advantage for BSNL,” Nagpal said.

He added, “BSNL has allotted frequency spectrum for three states, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra, where we are going to deploy our services through a franchisee network.”

Sharat Chandra, President & Chief Operating Officer, Strategy & New Technologies, GTL emphasized subscriber expectations with a detailed description of the enterprise, metro mobility and stationary customers. He also took into account an operator’s needs and expectations. He advocated the expansion of personal broadband services to areas where 3G may not be available for mobile operators. In reference to fixed network operators, he threw light on the need to enhance fixed broadband offerings with personal broadband services and improved economics for “Hot Zone” services.

Noting the market challenges in India, Chandra said that there is a high requirement of the long reach of WiMAX for rural applications to leverage existing or proposed cellular or USO infrastructure. He also emphasized the fact that penetration has been hampered by the lack of PCs that are priced below Rs 10,000. He spoke about similar factors that have created the need for a technology like WiMAX, namely:

• Low broadband penetration in the rural and suburban areas
• Cost-effective service availability to subscribers
• Need for high bandwidth
• Need for low tariffs

Amresh Nandan, Head, Wireless Communication Practice, Tata Consultancy Services, sought the attention of the audience towards consumer trends, regulation and innovation. With consumer trends, he said that a particular segment of population which consists of youth who are over 20, educated, working, middle class, mostly media savvy, hungry for information, gadget freaks et al are the trend conscious, indeed the trendsetters and the opinion leaders in society.

With respect to regulation, Nandan valued infrastructure sharing and talked about the spectrum assignment criteria and spectrum policies. Pointing out the strong need for innovation, Nandan concluded with expressing hope that WiMAX would surely bring about last mile penetration in India.

During the proceeding of the conference, it was felt that the emerging telecom markets like India were adopting WiMAX technology across the entire spectrum of operator profiles be they telecom service operators, cable operators, 2G, 3G or even new entrants.

pratap.vikram@expressindia.com
malabika.sarkar@expressindia.com