BSNL will get Fund Rs.2395 crore for rural WiMax Deployment

BSNL will be given a grant of Rs 2,395 crore with a list of riders to enable the telco to complete the rollout of its wireless broadband services, an official in the telecom ministry aware of the development told ET.

Last month, BSNL had blared its disgust at operating as a social workhorse without compensation, and the state-owned telco had bluntly told the government that it would continue building wireless internet services across rural India only with a grant of Rs 2,395 crore more to support an unviable business.

The state-owned telecom company, which offers services in all parts of the country except Delhi and Mumbai, had written to the telecom department stating that it is against rolling out services on the rural WiMAX project on a no-profit/loss basis without adequate financial support.

The telecom department in a November 16 communication to BSNL had asked it to rework its estimates for its WiMax initiative and spread the costs associated with the project over a 20-year time frame, while also adding that the additional spectrum cost of Rs 1,662 crore must not be front loaded as this resource can be used over two decades.

The telco has also been asked to scale down its projections that 5% of its total revenues from this service would be incurred towards distribution and 2% towards marketing. It has also been asked to work out infrastructure sharing deals with other operators to lower costs.

The project is divided into three parts, and under phase-I about 1,000 towers for WiMAX are to be set up, followed by 6,863 units in the second phase.

So far, the Department of Information Technology , has agreed to provide subsidies to the tune of Rs 710 crore for the two phases — Rs 160 crore for setting up the first 1,000 towers and Rs 550 crore for the remaining. But BSNL has said that it can support a maximum of 1,798 towers with this level of funding.

This implies it can only build 798 towers when compared to the requirement of close to 7,000 units for completion of phase-II. BSNL’s move to stop the project will see only 17,000 Computer Service Centres (CSCs) get WiMAX-based internet connectivity across rural India against the government’s commitment to link over 62,000 CSCs through this project.

4G Africa selects Alvarion for Cameroon WiMAX rollout

Wireless broadband equipment supplier Alvarion has announced it has been chosen by Swiss telecoms firm 4G Africa to deploy a mobile WiMAX network in Cameroon. Under the contract, which is valued at USD2 million, the Israel-based vendor will deploy infrastructure in the cities of Douala and Yaounde using its end-to-end Mobile WiMAX 4Motion solution in the 2.5GHz frequency band. ‘4G Africa is focused on establishing WiMAX networks in emerging Sub-Saharan countries, such as Cameroon, with the overall aim to reduce the digital divide,’ commented Dov Bar-Gera, CEO of 4G Africa, adding: ‘Leveraging Alvarion’s technology and expertise allows us to provide a high-performance quality network, offering valuable broadband services to the residents in this market.’ Services are slated for launch in 2011 and are expected to provide connectivity to over 10,000 users within the first year of operation.

BSNL WiMAX in Ranga Reddy district

The facility is extremely useful for home users, individuals and home-office users in the district

People living in Ranga Reddy district can now access fastest wireless broadband connectivity with the BSNL rolling out the WiMAX facility in Shamshabad and Maheshwaram mandals. click here to Readmore

BSNL invites bids for 6,800 WiMax towers

Governmet-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) has invited bids to set up 6,800 WiMax towersin southern zone. The tender for setting up the WiMax base transceiver stations (BTS) is estimated at Rs 1,400 crore.

A senior official from BSNL told Financial Chronicle that the company has received bids from some of the players and is evaluating them. “We are evaluating the bids both in terms of technical and financial compliance. We will announce the successful bidder by next week. For the 6,800 towers it is estimated that the value would be around Rs 1,400 crore,” he said. This implementation for the BTS has initially been rolled out for the South zone.

At present, 1,000 towers are in the implementation stage under the first tender. The public sector undertaking (PSU) has outlined Rs 300 crore for setting up 1,000 towers.

“Once the roll-out is complete, we will start marketing the product for our customers. BSNL is the first operator in the country to offer wireless high speed broadband. We have not yet set a deadline for the launch of the service. Each signal from every tower will be available within a radius of 15 kilometres and it will be able to accommodate 1,000 customers,” he added.

Being government run operators, both BSNL and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) were the first service providers allotted WiMax spectrum. The department of telecom (DoT) has allotted WiMax spectrum in 2.5 GHz frequency band. MTNL has already invited bids from global players to set up and run its WiMax operations in Mumbai and Delhi.

WiMax or worldwide interoperability for microwave access is a wireless digital communications system for high speed broadband services.

The WiMax Forum forecasts that India will have 19 million WiMax subscribers by 2012, or 20 per cent of the world’s WiMax user base.

The government plans to auction the WiMax spectrum in January 2010, after which private telecom companies would be able to commercially roll out high-speed wireless broadband services. Last month the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) fixed Rs 1,750 crore as the reserve price for WiMax spectrum.