Telcoms wiring up to go all wireless

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Mumbai, March 27: India's chances of meeting a 2010 target of 20 million broadband subscribers relies heavily on going wireless and telecoms Companies are tripping over themselves to spread the net.

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) provides high-speed internet connections to fixed and mobile telephone users over a wide area using radio spectrum.

"Broadband coverage would increase with WiMax -- it is one of the key technologies that would really expand the growth of broadband in the country," said Cisco's advanced tech business development manager for South Asia, Paramjit Puri.

Research and advisory firm Gartner has estimated that India will have 6.9 million mobile and fixed WiMax connections by the end of 2011.

And the scramble is on. Tata Communications, which offers WiMax for business customers in about 30 cities, is investing $500 million in further rollouts. Bharat Sanchar Nigam had announced a similar investment of its own.

Reliance Communications is offering WiMax in Pune and Bangalore, while Mahanagar Telephone Nigam is expected to announce its WiMax plans shortly.

FIXED, MOBILE, OR BOTH

At present broadband access mostly uses the dominant DSL technology over copper loops. The state-run firms, MTNL and BSNL, are the leading players but still short of their own targets.

"See, ultimately you cannot put so much copper on the ground because the cost is going to go up," said Intel's Lil Mohan, director for WiMax, Emerging Markets.

"Subscribers will go up, price of customer equipment will drop, making it cheaper than DSL - and you can get it whenever and wherever you want, including rural areas," said Mohan.

It will also ring in more revenues per user with greater bandwidth to offer more services.

But not all is rosy. India has alloted 3.3 giga hertz frequency while the worldwide standard is 2.5 GHz, which means vendors will have to build special equipment for India.

It is also more expensive to deploy WiMax in the 3.3 GHz frequency, in terms of more base stations, transmitters and equipment, says Intel's Mohan.

Low PC penetration too would be limiting in fixed Wimax, especially for the retail segment.

"WiMax is still a niche technology and limited to enterprise and high-end residential users in urban India," said Gartner analyst Naresh Singh in the report.

But the hurdles have not discouraged the Tatas from investing in fixed WiMax. BSNL is betting on mobile Wimax, while Reliance hopes to take its fixed services into the mobile segment.