Indian WiMAX Future Trend Analysis

India Broadband Wireless & WiMAX Market Analysis & Forecasts In 2008, Indian telecom continued to grow unmindful of any global economic meltdown or financial crisis. The mobile sector, in fact, broke all its previous records and added a robust 114 million cellular subscribers between January and December 2008. Leading into the New Year the streak continued, driven by new forces such as Reliance and Tata as the duo crossed over from CDMA to GSM, thus adding additional streams of new subscribers. Cellular subscriber additions are likely to push ARPUs further down in one of the lowest ARPU markets in the world, where up to 10 service providers compete for subscribers in some circles, thus raising concerns if the Indian mobile bandwagon may price itself out of sustainability at some point.

The broadband-hungry nation of India might just be waking up to realities. For starters, 2007 could well become the Preparatory Year of Wireless Broadband. Although the former Minister of Telecommunications in India proclaimed 2007 as the Year of Broadband for India, 2008 will instead become the Year of Wireless Broadband for India. Despite the unmet requirement to free bandwidth from various stakeholders, the key engines for broadband growth V the operators V are not willing to wait. Genuine Indian innovation is at work as vendors, operators, and system integrators are coming together like never before to work with whatever is available to trigger a bandwidth revolution.

In stark contrast, the Indian broadband sector continued to be filled with alternating moods of despair and hope as the government announced and postponed spectrum auctions with remarkable deftness. While the Year of Broadband campaigns remained on the agenda, service providers ended the year with more confusion than a clear BWA/WiMAX/3G strategy regarding where their businesses were headed. The top issue on every service providers' to-do list was: shore up more voice subscribers on 2G today - everything else can wait And so it did.
Some major facts
* The Indian BWA/WiMAX subscriber count added in the last year is well above 250,000.
* About 10,000 BWA/WiMAX base station sectors were deployed in 2008 alone.
* BWA/WiMAX ARPU for SMEs (small-to-mediumsized- enterprises) is in the range of Rs 2500 - Rs 5000 (US$50 to US$100)
* USB modem prices quoted to service providers in RFP responses were as low as US$35 - US$50 for even small volume shipments such as 150,000- 200,000.
* Effective charges applied by service providers to subscribers for stand alone CPEs ranged from free US$200, depending on tariff plans.
* Service provider approaches to BWA/WIMAX are mixed:
* BSNL, the incumbent with a clear lead time (likely one year) on pre-allocated pan-Indian 2.5GHz is likely to be the big driver of WiMAX.
* Operators such as Reliance and Tata have demonstrated what can be done by using slim 3.3GHz bands, and established the case for fixed WiMAX in India.
* Operators such as Bharti Airtel have taken demand-driven approach where they have extended coverage based on enterprise need/availability of fiber/DSL and feasibility of BWA/WiMAX.
* We estimate that WiMAX subscribers will reach 13.5 million by the end of 2013.
* By 2013, the non-WiMAX BWA subscriber count will be down to sub-million.

WiMAX has generated a lot of interest in India. Due to limited 3G spectrum and low broadband penetration, India is expected to be a key growth market for the technology. Many industry players believe that the allocation of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum to private sector operators, expected in 2Q10, will open up attractive opportunities for the technology in the country. However, our analysis suggests that WiMAX will only serve a niche market rather than dominating the field.

TATA Communications for a complete WiMAX rollout in India

Tata Communications unveils an ambitious plan to become a global leader in wireless broadband by launching the world's largest commercial network.
India is about to become the frontier for high-speed, mobile Internet connections. On Mar. 4, India's Tata Communications, an emerging broadband player, announced the countrywide rollout of a commercial WiMax network, the largest anywhere in the world of the high-speed, wireless broadband technology.


Already 10 Indian cities and 5,000 retail and business customers use the product, and by next year Tata will offer service in 115 cities nationwide. The folks at Tata can hardly contain their excitement. "WiMax is not experimental, it's oven-hot," says Tata's Prateek Pashine, in charge of the company's broadband and retail business.

Of course WiMax is not new. Most everyone in the industry has been talking about it for years. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has been propagating its virtues in pilot projects across the world, including India and Africa.

Tata Communications has been working on setting this up for a couple of years, and successfully completed field trials last December. It has used the technology from Telsima, a Sunnyvale (Calif.) maker of WiMax base-stations and the leading WiMax tech provider in the world. For now, the technology will be restricted to fixed wireless, but Tata plans to make it mobile by midyear. The company has invested about US$100 million in the project, which will increase to US$500 million over the next four years as it begins to near its goal of having 50 million subscribers in India.

Global tech analysts are will be watching carefully. Though WiMax is prevalent in Korea, the Korean service is a slightly different version, says Bertrand Bidaud, a communications analyst with Gartner in Singapore. It's a Korea-specific pre-WiMax technology called WiBRO.

But the Indian market is where the conditions for a WiMax deployment are the best, he says, because of limited fixed lines. That means Tata has fewer hurdles to overcome. And as WiMax scales up fast, it will give service providers greater flexibility and costs will drop equally rapidly

"If it doesn't succeed in India, it will be difficult [for it to succeed] anywhere else, and Bharti, Tata has been virtually asleep, with a limited subscriber base for its limited product," says Alok Sharma, chief executive of Telsima. "In fact, even with as many as seven broadband providers in the market, the total Indian subscriber base is just 3.2 million and there is no clear market leader. But with the WiMax rollout Tata can gain a leadership position and add a few thousand subscribers a day."


Tata is, of course, going for the heavy-billing corporate customer--a target audience that is beginning to make big investments in technology.

But also important is the ordinary Indian retail customer who can watch movies via WiMax and enjoy Tata's other unique offerings. For instance, users can take in an early morning worship service at the famous Balaji temple in South India. The temple permitted Tata to install cameras so that Hindu devotees from around the world could watch the proceedings in the temple around the clock. To get connected initially, users will simply have to go to a store, buy a router, install it, and then they become instantly connected. It will be as easy as buying apples, Tata executives promise.

The Tata rollout is a chance for India to become cutting-edge in mobile Internet services, say WiMax boosters

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Dell WiMAX enabled Notebooks

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WiMAX-enabled notebook from Dell, They were Dell Studio XPS 13 and Dell Studio XPS 16. Both should be premium laptop series from Dell with cutting edge technology.Recently Engadget share several leaked photos of Dell Studio XPS 13, code name Adamo . Dell plans to market as the “world’s thinnest laptop”, expected to released in November, but it has been delayed.

Specification
The Dell Studio XPS 13, complete with a slick leather, brushed metal and gloss-plastic casing. Full specs on the 13-inch notebook are unknown, but going by the press photos we can see that it has two USB 2.0 ports, an eSATA port, HDMI output and VGA output, together with wired ethernet.
Other specs include a slot-load optical drive, integrated webcam and microphone, and a multiformat memory card reader. A previous leak suggests that the notebook is based on Intel’s Centrino 2 platform, with Hybrid SLI support, Blu-ray drive, edge-to-edge glass display with optional LED backlighting and both WiMAX and UWB (Ultra Wide Band) support.

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Intel continued leadership and commitment to making WiMAX across World

Recently WiMAXian featured Intel demonstrated live video call over WiMAX between Sean Maloney,CEO of Intel, and Dennis Sverdlov,CEO of Yota, utilized a 3.5 GHz WiMAX-enabled notebook.

The demo illustrated Intel’s continued technology leadership and commitment to making WiMAX the wireless broadband technology of choice around the world.
Again Intel continued its commitment to develop WiMAX technology by premiered a prototype demonstrating Group Scheduling, a technology to increase the capacity of VoIP in 802.16m, next-generation WiMAX standard.

Vijay Kesavan,Senior Network Software Engineer of Intel, showed that a WiMAX cell site could accommodate 208 callers using the technology, compared to just 152 without it. In effect, it cuts the bandwidth usage of the VoIP calls by 40 percent. That’s a big deal because wireless carriers face big problems as revenue from voice calls plummets and costs of delivering data are rising.

The Group Scheduling’s target are:

• Scheduling calls by groups reduces frame overhead and increases capacity for VoIP calls
• Easier to make calls during peak periods
• Technology adopted in IEEE 802.16m, the next-generation WiMAX standard

The WiMAX standards group has adopted the technology, and it could be built into the WiMAX 802.16m,next-generation WiMAX standard.

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India Under WiMAX - The Wireless World

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India will experience the greatest ever internet invasion ever in the next couple of years with wimax service by bsnl wimax covering the entire nation under its new plans which intend to cover the whole country under the wimax umbrella in the next year and a half. Its not just bsnl wimax which is going to provide wimax services in India but there is a bunch of service provider ready to roll out wimax service pretty soon. The ones I know of are Reliance wimax, sify wimax, mtnl wimax and a few others which have plans in the pipeline and some of them are applying for licenses at the moment. Reliance wimax has already been launched in Bangalore and Pune with plans for a Mumbai launch any time soon.

In India the wired form of delivering internet connection has not seen a lot of success mainly due to poor infrastructure unlike China where things are better planned for technology to come before hand.

welcome this wimax intrusion in India internet market which will transform the lives of millions in the next two years.

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Sequans has been selected as BSNL's WiMAX Chipmaker

WiMAX chipmaker Sequans has been selected to supply chips to Bangalore based PointRed, product subsidiary of Chennai based Gemini Communicati
ons, the major winner of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) contract award for deployment of WiMAX network equipment

BSNL News: December-2010 will see complete rural WiMAX roll-out

After numerous failed deadlines, BSNL has said that it will complete the roll out of WiMAX in rural areas by the year end.

Chennai-based Gemini Communications, Chinese equipment maker ZTE and the US-based Harris Stratex (renamed Aviat) are the three companies which now need to get a security clearance from the the Department of Telecom.

The Rs 1,000-crore project has hit a roadblaock with BSNL’s internal vigilance officer putting a stay on giving the project to one of the four shortlisted bidders. The Hyderabad-based VMC Ltd., which had emerged the fourth lowest bidder for the project, has been put under scanner for alleged evasion of duties by its parent company.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has also issued a show-cause notice to Prithvi Information Solution, the parent company of VMC, for the alleged non-payment of duties.
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Indian WiMAX subscribers will exceed 13 Million by 2013

News about competion in WiMAX Service by Telecom Giants

Tata Communications (TCL) has signed up 50,000 subscribers for its fixed WiMAX service. TCL, earlier known as VSNL, had received WiMax spectrum in the 3.3 GHz band under its Internet Service Provider (ISP) licence with the Indian government. Other Indian network operators- Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Sify and Reliance Communications – also own spectrum in this band.

Tata Communications Internet Services (TCISL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of TCL, is investing substantially for its WiMAX rollout to ensure that it gets a headstart in the acquisition of subscribers. The company, with a WiMAX capex outlay of $500 million for three years ending FY12, has put in place around 1,400 base stations across 140 cities. This makes it the largest WiMax network in the world, according to TCISL COO Prateek Pashine. TCISL has procured its WiMax equipment from Telsima Corp, a company recently acquired by Harris Stratex Networks. TCISL is obtaining customer premise equipment (CPE) from Taiwan-based networking and communications equipment firm Universal Scientific Industrial (USI).

BSNL WiMAX Andhra Pradesh Coverage Updated List

Service Coverage Area
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New DGM Office Kakinanda

BSNL launching WiMAX service in Orissa

BSNL Heads to state of Orissa for WiMAX services
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), State owned telecom giant, will launch its WiMAX services in Orissa this year. The WiMAX service, which provides broadband wireless internet connection in rural areas, has already been launched in Rajasthan on a pilot basis.


In Orissa, the sources said, as many as 645 WiMAX BTS sites has been identified. In the first phase, WiMAX BTS will be set up at 107 locations while other 538 locations will be covered in the second phases. These include 14 stations in Berhampur telecom district, covering Ganjam and Gajapati districts, said the general manager of the telecom district, BK Nayak. The equipment had already been installed by the Indian Telephone Industry (ITI), Bangalore, in the sites proposed to be covered in the first phase. The testing will conducted soon before full launch of the service, he stated. The main purpose of the WiMAX service is to take the broadband internet service to the rural areas, where laying of cable to provide internet connection is either not possible or too expensive.

BSNL Aiming 250,000 WiMAX Subscribers by Dec 2010

WiMAX in a Fast Track Deployment
BSNL is planning to have a base of at least 250,000 WiMax customers by the year end. Currently BSNL has approximately 3,000 WiMax customers and we intend to have a customer base of at least 250,000 by December 2010." BSNL has recently launched WiMax services in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, with 25 base stations in each of these states. It has also rolled-out the service with 210 base stations spread across North and East India. Its present roll-out has covered approximately 4000 common rural service centres. A base station is a wireless communications station installed at a fixed location and used to communicate with WiMAX or any other wireless system.Apart from that, we intend to launch urban WiMax on a revenue share basis in other states. Also, 1,000 base stations will be commissioned in rural areas in the coming month. For rolling-out its WiMax network, BSNL is currently working with HCL; Chinese telco Huawei; Gemini Communications, a technology and network provider headquartered in Chennai; Pointred, a Bangalore-based wireless design and product company; ICOMM, a Hyderabad-based company with interests that include telecom and Harris Stratex, a network provider with global presence and headquarters in the USA and in Singapore.

Beceem and ICOMM Tele Enable BSNL's 4G-WiMAX

Beceem Communications, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions for 4G-WiMAX, and ICOMM Tele, a leading Indian Telecommunications Equipment Maker, announced that the recent launch of BSNL's WiMAX service in Kerala is using devices made by ICOMM that are based on Beceem's highperformance BCS5200 and BCSM250 chipsets.


The successful service launch highlights the close collaboration between Beceem and ICOMM Tele, during which both companies worked together closely to optimize their unique solution for BSNL and developed the foundation for an open device ecosystem.In launching BSNL's Kerala network, the largest planned Mobile WiMAX network in South India, ICOMM has enabled BSNL to take a strong leadership position in the wireless broadband service development, and play an important role in enabling this historic event.Beceem has made tremendous contributions to the overall WiMAX ecosystem development.

Qualcomm and Infotel get Kerala WiMAX licence

Qualcomm and Infotel will provide WiMAX Service with BSNL in KERALA Circle

California based chipset maker Qualcomm Inc. and Delhi based Infotel Broadband have won the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) licence for Kerala in the auctions that ended yesterday. The winning price for Kerala was Rs.258.67 crores. In another development, Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries has acquired 95% stake in Infotel.

Wireless Broadband Acess or WiMAX, which is a 4G Technology provides high-speed wireless internet and data network access over a wide area. The service will allow companies to offer high-speed Internet access as well as IP Telephony and IP TV services.


Companies can deploy WiMAX to provide mobile broadband or at-home broadband connectivity across whole cities. Additionally, given the relatively low cost to deploy a WiMAX network (in comparison to GSM, DSL or Fiber-Optic), it is now possible to provide broadband in places where it may have not been economically viable.

BSNL is already offering WiMAX services in Kerala.

Reliance Buys Infotel Broadband for WiMAX service in India

Reliance Industries Limited Entering into Broadband Market of India


Infotel Broadband Services Ltd won the auction for India’s Wireless Broadband Access (BWA), Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) made a surprising move by acquiring 95% share in the company owned by the Nahata family. This will pit the Ambani brothers against each other in the telecom sector, which is permissible after the annulment of the non-compete agreement less than a month back.

Infotel Broadband is the successful bidder for all 22 circles at Rs 12,848 crore.
In the BWA auction, Aircel successfully bid for eight circles for Rs 3,438 crore. Bharti Airtel and Qualcomm Inc managed to corner four circles each. Eleven companies participated in the BWA auction for two bandwidth slots in the 22 circles. The BWA spectrum will make it possible to use hi-speed technologies like Wimax that is faster and more traversable than WiFi.


The latest move by Mukesh Ambani of RIL will place him in direct competition in the telecom sector with his estranged brother Anil Ambani of Reliance Communications, the country’s second largest mobile service provider. However, RCom had earlier pulled out of the BWA auction after it succeeded in the 3G auction of last month.
Wireless broadband internet services market in the country is expected to grow 100-fold in the next five years.

BWA auction completes Government raises Rs 38,000 Crores

WiMAX spectrum auction ends

The 16 day auction for the Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum is completed. The Indian government received more than Rs 38,000 crores during the BWA spectrum auctions.

Wednesday saw the conclusion of 110 rounds of the auction of airwaves for BWA services. This is a simultaneous online auction for two slots in each of the country's 22 service areas.The auction, which began last week, saw the pan-India BWA licence price going up over 600 percent from the Rs.1,750 crore base price fixed by the government.

BWA spectrum is essential for rolling out Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) services enabling hand-held devices and laptops to access the Internet.

The spectrum will allow companies to offer high-speed Internet access as well as Internet telephony and television services. It can also be used for voice and high-speed data services.

The total receipts to the government from the combined sale of BWA and 3G spectrum crossed Rs 1.06 lakh crores. This is almost three times when compared to the projections of Rs 35,000 crore that Finance Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee made during his budget speech this February. The Department of Telecom has not shared the details regarding the BWA spectrum auction winners yet, the same will be shared shortly.

Eleven companies - Bharti Airtel, Reliance WiMax, Idea Cellular, Aircel, Augere Mauritius Ltd, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar - are participating in the BWA auction.

Similar to what happened during the 3G auctions, the circles of national capital Delhi and the business capital Mumbai got the highest bids which were Rs 2,221 crore and Rs 2,272 crore respectively.

Two all-India slots of 20 MHz spectrum were auctioned during the BWA spectrum auction. Government players MTNL and BSNL were provided with the BWA spectrum before the private players but they will have to pay the amount equal to the winning bid amount in each areas of service.

The successful bidders in this auction can use the assigned frequency for commercial purposes immediately after they get the spectrum.Broadband Wireless Access spectrum can be used for high speed Internet and data services along with services like Voice, Internet Telephony and internet based Television services

Indian WiMAX : Interesting informations

Indian WiMAX interesting Facts
1. Once deployed, BSNL’s WiMAX network will be the largest in the world.

2. With WiMAX subscriber base expected to reach 19 million by 2012 and WiMAX equipment market value projected to top US$600 million eventually following the auction of 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz licenses, Indian WiMAX market presents enormous business opportunities. India is slated to become the largest WiMAX market in the Asia-Pacific by 2013. A recent study sees India’s WiMAX subscriber base hitting 14 million by Year 2013 and grow annually at nearly 130% which means that in the next four years about 20 per cent of the global WiMAX users will be in India, making it a $13-billion market.

3. Emerging markets are regarded as the primary market for the WiMAX industry, specifically India, whose market is expected to grow significantly. Currently, the number of people using broadband in India is relatively low. There are only 4.5 million users out of a population of 120 million. Therefore, it is certainly a great opportunity for WiMAX operators to increase their coverage area. It is predicted that there will be 27 million WiMAX users in India before 2012, which would account for 20% of the worldwide WiMAX market. These days, Indian operators, have already deployed a 802.16d fixed WiMAX network between 3.3GHz-3.4GHz. Some of them have already finished deployment in many cities. According to the data from the Indian government, the economic growth rate continues to rise 9% each year and mobile consumers continue to increase by roughly 8 million users each month. After the issuance of licenses for WiMAX network deployment, it is expected to bring large-scale business opportunities for purchasing WiMAX equipment and terminal products.

4. India probably will see the world’s lowest end -to-end cost for WiMAX service and will drive costs down further than any other market. Integrated operators will erect WiMAX towers along with CDMA towers and derive further cost advantages. Third-party radio-tower companies have emerged within the last year in India who offer managed tower services for cellular operators. An extension of this would be to provide nationwide WiMAX tower services in managed -service mode. Bringing together thousands of towers is bound to create additional cost benefits to the WiMAX operator.

5. Currently, cellular operators are deriving a 15 -18% cost advantage from shared tower services. The Internet user population in India will have exceeded 200 million. This will be made possible by lower -cost PCs and notebooks, CPEs below US$40, and cheaper broadband service. It is predicted to accumulate 21 million BWA subscribers by 2014, counting both residential and business segments. WiMAX subscribers should represent the majority of this figure.

6. Approximately 66% of the WiMAX subscribers will be mobile 802.16-2005, predominately residential, while fixed WiMAX will continue to be driven by large corporations and, to a lesser extent, by SME customers

7. The Indian market for WiMAX will continue to be one of the most sought after markets for global equipment vendors. The nation promises to offer huge, consistently high growth for the next several years, judging by its extremely low broadband penetration rates
(under 3 million for a population of over 1 billion).

(Thanks to the authors)