Interesting...........
=====================================================
Info Tech March 12, 2008, 7:47AM EST text size: TT
A WiMax Breakthrough in India
Tata Communications unveils an ambitious plan to become global leader in wireless broadband by launching the world's largest commercial network
by Manjeet Kripalani
A new nationwide wireless broadband network will soon make online access faster for millions of Indians like Sujatha, a resident in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad who reguarly trades stocks on her laptop.
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 (INTC) Chairman Craig Barrett has been propagating its virtues in pilot projects across the world, including India and Africa (BusinessWeek, 9/3/07).
Powered by Intel Chips
Sprint (S) will be rolling out a WiMax network in Washington next month, and in other U.S. cities next year. Until now the most advanced use of WiMax has been in Japan and Korea, where Japanese carrier KDDI and Korea Telecom offer extensive WiMax networks. However the Japanese and Korean services are not available nationwide—KDDI will have its major rollout only in 2009—and most people use them as supplements to the wired services.
It's in emerging economies like India, where there is little connectivity and where mobile usage is soaring because of the difficulty in getting broadband wires to homes and offices, that WiMax is likely to see its full potential as a commercially viable technology. Intel, whose silicon chips power WiMax, has been pushing for this technology for some years and its executives are practically salivating at the thought of the successful rollout in India. "The more countries and telcos that get behind this technology the better," says R. Sivakumar, chief executive of Intel South Asia. Predicting that the new technology will make other types of Internet access obsolete, he boasts "Tata will set the cat among the pigeons."
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 $100 million in the project, which will increase to $500 million over the next four years as it begins to near its goal of having 50 million subscribers in India.
The World is Watching
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 (IT) 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. 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," says Alok Sharma, chief executive of Telsima. Tata is, of course, going for the heavy-billing corporate customer—a target audience that is beginning to make big investments in technology.
Temple Service via WiMax
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. For India, which "always used last year's fashion to dress itself up," says Sharma, it is a chance to launch a brand new. fourth-generation technology that the world can follow. "India is becoming the knowledge center of the world; it should take the lead in this," he adds.
Kripalani is BusinessWeek's India bureau chief.
Reader Discussion
BW Extras
Podcasts
Top Designers
Behind the Cover
CEO Guide to Tech
more…
RSS Feeds
Most Popular
Top News
Innovation Trends
more…
E-mails
Asia Insider
MBA Express
BW.com Insider
more…
Blogs
Blogspotting
Hot Property
Tech Beat
more…
Most Popular Stories
Read
E-mailed
Discussed
The iPod Touch: Apple's Sleeper Device
Dividends: The Sweet Spot
The Search for the Killer iPhone App
How a Michigan Do-Over Would Hurt Obama
VMware Beefs Up Its Bench
RSS Feed: Most Read Stories
The iPod Touch: Apple's Sleeper Device
A WiMax Breakthrough in India
Lenders Face Still More Misery
VMware Beefs Up Its Bench
Best Bets for Fixed-Income Investments
RSS Feed: Most E-mailed Stories
How a Michigan Do-Over Would Hurt Obama
Guess Who's Getting the Most Work Visas
The iPod Touch: Apple's Sleeper Device
Lenders Face Still More Misery
Eliot Spitzer's Seven Deadly Sins
RSS Feed: Most Discussed Stories
Most Popular Multimedia
Slide Shows
Best Affordable Suburbs 2007 - BusinessWeek
The Top Undergrad Business Schools - BusinessWeek
Most Expensive Suburbs to Live Now 2008 - BusinessWeek
Ten Cities with the Most Homes for Sale - BusinessWeek
Where Rents Are Rising Fastest
RSS Feed: Most Popular Slide Shows
Ads by Google
Mobile WiMAX Latest News
Free Weekly WiMAX information Get the wireless broadband report
www.FierceBroadbandWireless.com
3 Stocks to Steal Now
Stock Guru Dennis Slothower Gives You 3 Absolute Steals to Buy Now!
StealthStocksOnline.com
SureData Corporation
Process Innovation, Project Mgmt Municipal Wireless, Homeshoring
www.suredata.com
Wireless Training Courses
Authors of the WiMAX Forum Certified Training programs
www.DoceoTech.com
BW Mall - Sponsored Links
DRIVE Financial Performance With SAP Technology Sign Up For Your Free Paper. Better Manage Financial Performance & Tackle Today’s Complex Issues.
Study accredited UK postgraduate degrees Earn an industry focused accredited masters degree in 1 year full-time or 3 years online. Ranked 2nd in UK for employability by FT. Aberd...
Compare Leading CRM Software Providers Match With ACT, SAP CRM, Siebel CRM & More. Grow Sales & Improve Customer Relationships.
External Battery for All Your Electronics No more running out of power! Just simply connect and charge. You’ll never be caught powerless again
The Columbia Coaching Certification Program Internal Coach Intensive – Creating Coaching Organizations for Breakthrough Performance
Buy a link now!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertising | Special Sections | MarketPlace | Knowledge Centers | Terms of Use | Disclaimer | Privacy Notice | Ethics Code | Contact Us | Careers
Copyright 2000-2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
close
