Broadband wireless access, commonly known as WiMAX services, has emerged a clear winner over 3G in terms of the number of applications received by the government on Friday, the last day for companies to put in their applications.
While there were 11 applications for the auction of BWA spectrum, 3G services got only nine. All major telecom players, including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Aircel and the Tata group have applied for both, thus, making it clear that 3G would largely be used for voice services while BWA would be their preference for data services and broadband.
The nine applicants for 3G are: Bharti, Vodafone-Essar, Tata Teleservices, Etisalat, S Tel, Videocon, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular and Aircel.
The 11 aspirants for BWA are: Tikona Digital, Qualcomm, Tata Communications, Vodafone-Essar, Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Spice, Augere, HFCL, and Reliance Communications.
The 3G spectrum auction would begin from April 9 and the BWA, two days after the close of 3G auctions.
There?s another reason why the major telecom players have applied for both. A combination of the two technologies would gain popularity in the present situation for cost reasons when funds are hard to come by.
Since a company will get only 5 Mhz spectrum in 2.1 Ghz band to offer 3G services, it will have to choose between either voice or data services. Trying to offer both will affect quality. It is, therefore, expected that operators would mostly use the 3G spectrum for voice, as it would also give them room to migrate high-end users, thus vacating the 2G space to accommodate the low-end users.
For data services like video streaming, WiMAX would be used where operators would get a chunk of 20 Mhz spectrum in the 2.3 Ghz band.
Further, the cost of deploying WiMAX base station is much lower (about one-tenth) of deploying a 3G network. For instance, the cost of setting a WiMAX BTS is around $14,000 against $35,000 for setting up a 3G base station.
