South Korea’s Samsung Electronics dominates the worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) turf globally with almost 40% market share. It has joined the companies supporting Wimax standard technologies instead of long term evolution (LTE) and is holding discussions with Indian operators to launch the services immediately. Both WiMAX and LTE are broadband wireless access (BWA) technologies. Samsung Electronics VP-global marketing group (telecommunication systems division) Hung Song spoke to FE?s Nikita Upadhyay about the Indian WiMAX potential, operators? readiness and Samsung?s business interests inIndia. Excerpts:

What makes you vouch for Wimax in the Indian context?

In the past few months a lot of activity has been seen in the telecom sector in India. Operators have spent about $29 billion for 3G and BWA licences. India?s population and the current broadband penetration brings in a huge opportunity for mobile broadband. In less than 5 years from now, India will be fastest growing country in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) growth. A recent study by the World Bank said that for every 10% increase in broadband adoption of a developing nation leads to about 1.3% growth in its GDP. According to a study by McKinsey, if broadband penetration in emerging markets is on par with Western Europe?s, then GDP will increase by $30-420 billion creating more 10-14 million jobs. Also, India has huge challenge in last mile connectivity when given through ADSL lines. Mobile broadband which is a wireless based service will be more helpful. 2G, 3G and 4G are the same technologies with different capabilities and coverage. When we get WiMAX technology in India, it will be the latest and the fastest one. This new technology will be an IP based technology.

Are the operators and infrastructure ready for it in India?

Fortunately, in India today we have more than 3 lakh base stations across the country. WiMAX will require a few additional equipments. A few operators have also done pilots of this technology in the rural areas for the purpose of health, education, telemedicine, amongst others. Operators like Reliance, Airtel, Tikona, Aircel have already started preparing themselves for their offerings. These operators have paid an enormous amount of money to get the BWA licence and hence want to launch as soon as possible so as to monetize on their investment. India has a cluster of users who are ready to pay for such high end technology and speed. Operators are ready, market is ready and also subscribers are ready. It could be a matter of few months when we will witness these services.

How do you plan to tap the competitive space in India?

For the WiMAX ground in India, we are looking at complete solutions. We want to provide services, equipment and participate in planning, building, maintaining the networks. A rough calculation shows that the amount spent on BWA license for 12 circles in India has cost around $2.5-2.7 billion and these operators have a per day opportunity of $1.2 million. The country will witness a huge competition in this sphere. With 40% market share globally, our networks today serve 2-3 million mobile WiMAX customers.

How significant is the Wimax division within the Samsung Group? What kind of growth do you see in India?

Currently, the WiMAX division a very small part of the Samsung group. Last year it contributed around $720 million to the group?s revenue. We have 25 contracted operators worldwide and 15 operators with their ongoing commercial services for mobile WiMAX service worldwide. We have a huge software development facility in Bangalore. We are also creating a services pan India team to develop partners. Samsung is also looking at setting up a repair centre and technical support centre here. We see a good growth of this technology in India. We are not here to take low hanging fruits and exit the market but we are determined to be long term players here.