Deployment and Monetization of WiMAX a little tardy

 

Not only this, it witnessed gathering from WiMAX Forum, IPTV Forum, CMAI and ACTO, apart from many other telecom vendors and operators.

 

Discussions centred on increasing ARPU with innovative WiMAX services which are appealing to the Indian consumers and global marketing strategies in order to encourage the users to use advanced data services. 

 

Strategies on boosting the penetration of WiMAX usage in smaller cities and rural areas were also discussed at length. Most of the operators felt that global success stories and lessons learnt from large-scale WiMAX deployments could be of help in targeting the Indian market better. Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, CEO of Telecom Industry Consultants, said that the telecom operators in India will have to deploy multi-modal devices that will allow consumers to switch between WiMAX, EVDO and HSDPA.

 

During the last session of the day, “SWOT analysis of WiMAX in India”, it was concluded that consumers want Mobile Broadband, and do not really care about the carrier technology being deployed.

It was disclosed during the event that BSNL has chosen Elitecore Technologies Core Network & Session Control Software -EliteAAA for WiMAX rollout in both rural and urban circles. BSNL plans to have 1.8 million subscribers using its services in rural areas of India. 

 

“Over the years, we have been working with BSNL on a number of projects. We are happy that we have been able to deliver solutions to meet BSNL requirements and shall continue to serve and support them with our solutions in the future,” says Nikhil Jain, COO & Director, Elitecore Technologies.

 

One of the major issues brought to table during the discussions was that if telcos have already spent 80 per cent of their money at the auction itself, this would result in delay in the deployment and monetization of WiMAX, since telcos will have less money to spend.

 

Even a possibility of hiking auction price was predicted by the telecom operators who do not get 3G spectrum in the ongoing auctions, there is a possibility that they will, in desperation, push the BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) auction price too high. 

 

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Both 3G and WiMAX are sought-after technologies and have taken the country by storm. With WiMAX, you can roll out very fast, besides putting lesser investments on its initial infrastructure set-up, which is not the case with 3G. So, when it comes to rural setting, it makes more sense to access a technology like WiMAX. But 3G is always complemented with WiMAX. It doesn’t make much of a difference to the end-user and depends wholly on the operator as to how he wants to capture the customer. Currently, BSNL is the only operator deploying this service in the country and is looking for a broader coverage. Our existing Elitecore applications are being accessed by BSNL for broadband deployment, which is also helping them roll out their service faster. With more operators entering this sphere, WiMAX will change the contours of the broadband connectivity of the country. 

 

 

 

In view of the maturity of the 3G technology, it seems to be very suitable for the Indian market, giving the operator future investment growth. But, at the same time, the spectrum allocation for 3G is so less that it prevents you from creating any high bandwidth application out of it. So, that is where technology like WiMAX gets positioned and comes handy to fill the loopholes. It gives a broadband experience on wireless, combined with mobility, thus becoming a very compelling factor for users to adopt this service. Major things are happening in 2010 and so it is going to be a year of milestones. 3G auctioning is finally happening in the country by which players in this area will be identified. As a whole, broadband wireless will get a big boost.  

 

 

 

Secretary General, IPTV India Forum 

 

IPTV forum, a non-profitable organization caters to the mobile TV services in India. Owing to low-bandwidth penetration in the country, we are trying to work out the regulation framework and taking up this challenge of making this service available to all. The challenges of last-mile connectivity and wireless backhaul are always in question. WiMAX would be a fitting technology when it comes to both rural and urban connectivity. WiMaX is still at its nascent stage of implementation and it is still a long way to go in the country. Taking into consideration the rural demand where video is of prime importance rather than voice and data, large flow of bandwidth is required. So, once these bandwidth issues are solved, emerging technologies like 3G, 4G and WiMAX will have to play a big role n the times to come. IPTV being an interactive video platform would boost these rural requirements to a great extent.