WiMAX to revolutionize Rural India Landscape

Current developments in WiMax technologies are offering mobile personal broadband users to create whatever they want on a variety of devices from the laptop to cellphones making a huge difference to user experience. Revealing this at the WiMax India 2010 Conference, Dr. Hung Song, Vice-President of Samsung, displayed several tiny modems that could transform laptops, cellphones and other knowledge devices to wireless mode connecting to Internet through WiMax points.

The recent WiMax spectrum auction has fetched the Government US$8.56 billion. Department of Telecom Secretary and Telecom Commission Chairman P. J. Thomas referred to the Government programme of connecting all the six hundred thousand villages in a bid to reach out to the rural people. Over two and a half lakh panchayats would have broadband connectivity and wireless broadband access would be the most effective and efficient means of achieving this.

"The mobile revolution is now rolling and WiMax will accelerate it, he said. With prices of both equipment and devices falling day by day, the access would become affordable to the rural people. However, he cautioned vendors and operators seeking to set up shop in India to be aware that "doing business in India is different from that in any other country. Even the public sector BSNL has learnt it the hard way". Public sector BSNL was providing 60 per cent of the 12 million broadband connections that had been achieved in India, according to R. K. Agarwal, Director, Consumer Mobility, of the company.

He expected 6,000 blocks to be connected with wireless broadband this financial year and 7,800 next year. Broadband connections by BSNL would increase to over 11 million next year.Laying down a road map for rollout of the service in India, WiMAX Forum President & Chairman Ron Resnick advised operators to adopt a flexible architecture, reduce time to market and grab the opportunity to create millions of jobs. For the Government, it was "time for decisions" having done with the spectrum auctions. There were already a large number of equipment, devices and manufacturers and the opportunity “is vast”. An interesting event at the exhibition along with the conference was golf play and training for golf that ZTE put up using digital technology.