www.WirelessFederation.com/news: India is set to become the biggest base on earth for Wimax by 2012, with the state-owned carrier BSNL going live with the country’s first Mobile Wimax network. The company already has deployments using fixed Wimax but now plans a major national rollout based on 802.16e.

Out of two parallel projects, one for rural areas and other for metro areas, the former has already been launched by state minister for communications and IT, Sachin Pilot. Initially, access will be delivered to Common Service Centers since few people in rural districts will have personal computers or even power supply.

BSNL is planning to work with partners to enable several key applications in order to help to meet the Indian government’s targets to lift the country’s woeful levels of broadband penetration. 1,000 rural districts, 32 in Rajasthan, which will involve 11,500 Common Service Centers, will be covered in the first half while the second half will cover system across the nation, covering 50,000 CSCs.

The broadband tariffs will be very low, starting at INR140 ($3) a month and will aim to harness video to support telemedicine and remote education. Other utility will include utility bill payments, issue of official documents like land or vehicle registrations or birth certificates, state e-government processes and inter-village communications.