Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd plans to invest around Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) in its Wimax project.
“We are looking at investing around Rs 5,000 crore in the Wimax project,” BSNL Director (Finance) S D Saxena told PTI.
The company aims to roll out wireless broadband connectivity through WiMax technology commercially this year, especially in urban areas.
Initially, it will start its operations in three states — Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai), Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
It also plans to set-up 50,000 IT-enabled kiosks called common service centers (CSCs) running on Wimax technology, across the country.
However, BSNL is waiting for required spectrum for rolling out the Wimax services. Once the 3G and WiMax policy is spelt out by the Department of Telecommunication, both state-run operators BSNL and MTNL [Get Quote] will get automatic spectrum allocation, while private players have to bid for the radio frequencies.
“But a lot depends on the government’s announcement on 3G and Wimax and the allocation of spectrum,” Saxena added.
Earlier this year, the telecom major has also partnered with Soma Networks of the US for WiMax solution deployment.
The deal between the two companies is based on a public-private-partnership where the US based company will also invest in technology for WiMax roll out and both the companies will share the revenue. The complete deployment is for a period of three years.
Recently, a Springboard report stated that India will be the largest market for WiMax with an estimated market share of 35.7 per cent in terms of revenue in the Asia-pacific region and with 15.8 million subscribers by 2012.
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According to IDG, the Wi-Fi Alliance has introduced a program to certify voice handling on Wi-Fi networks.
The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval siginifies a product is capable of making or handling good-quality voice calls in the home or a small office environment, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Access points, wireless routers, handsets (which are growing at a steady rate) and laptops can all be tested and certified.
The IDG story says the push is a way for Wi-Fi Alliance to keep femtocells and upcoming technologies such as WiMax, HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long Term Evolution) - which lately have overshadowed Wi-Fi - out of the home, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics. Webb thinks Wi-Fi, helped by a low cost and a large installed base, will be able to stay dominant and keep away from troubled waters.
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The first certified implementation of mobile WiMAX has gone live in a small deployment in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, through a partnership of Alvarion’s silicon and DigitalBridge Communications.
DBC currently serves 3,000 homes and businesses in the area, and the company hopes to add the mobile capabilities to its 200,000-home footprint throughout the year, DBC said.
On June 17, the WiMAX Forum certified ten mobile WiMAX products that use the 2.5-GHz band. Mobile WiMAX allows for true nomadic roaming, like a cell phone or 3G-equipped notebook, allowing handsets or PC cards equipped with the proper chipset to receive WiMAX while on the road.
Alvarion’s BreezeMax 2.5 chipset, which will be used in Jackson Hole, is just one piece of the puzzle, however; DBC will still need to roll out a mobile station module to allow true broadband roaming using the technology. Alvarion, for its part, indicated that products “from the open market” could fill this need.
The products that the WiMAX Forum certified, however, include products from Airspan Networks, Beceem Communications, Intel, Samsung, Sequans Communications and ZyXEL, each of which received cerification for a mobile module. Alvarion, Motorola, Samsung, and Sequans all received certification for their base-station products. Certification ensures that all of the products are interoperable with one another.
More than 100 products are expected to be certified by the end of 2008, with over 1,000 by 2011, the Forum added.
The WiMAX Forum said that it will begin to accept certification applications for 3.5-GHz equipment during 3Q 2008, with testing to begin in the fourth quarter, and certification completed for those products before the end of the year. The 2.5-GHz band, where WiMAX is concerned, is essentially restricted to the United States; the 3.5-GHz band will be used elsewhere around the world. Testing of 2.3-GHz WiMAX procedures will also occur during 2008, the Forum said. The latter technology is used in a few locations throughout the world, most notably South Korea, where it is the spectrum band used by WiBro, a precursor to WiMAX.
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The WiMax Forum has issued its first long-awaited certifications for mobile 2.5GHz products.
The products comprise four base stations and six mobile station modules (also known as terminals) operating in the 2.5GHz frequency band from eight WiMax Forum member companies, including Intel, Motorola and Samsung.
Intel’s Wi-Fi and WiMax Link 5350 module is among the 10 products approved and is expected to be available in selective laptops in the US by the end of the year.
The Forum claimed that more than 100 Mobile WiMax products are due to be certified by the end of the year.
“With the successful completion of extensive 2.5GHz testing, we have laid the groundwork to speed up additional profile certifications and ultimately to continue advancing global WiMax deployments at a record pace,” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMax Forum.
A WiMax Forum study predicts that there will be more than 133 million WiMax users globally by 2012, around 70 per cent of whom will use mobile and portable WiMax devices to access broadband internet services.
However, industry experts predicted recently that, while WiMax broadband services are likely to be taken up by consumers, they will be shunned by businesses.
Analyst firm In-Stat said earlier this month that WiMax has the “right balance” for consumers, but that businesses will provide more of a challenge to WiMax operators because of the need for ubiquitous coverage.
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Samsung Electronics, a leading provider of Mobile WiMAX¢â solutions, announced today it has been awarded with the world¡¯s first WiMAX Forum Wave2 certification for both ¡®Base Station¡¯ and ¡®Mobile Station¡¯ which support the 2.5GHz band, at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress 2008, in Amsterdam.
The Mobile WiMAX Certified products are commercial grade ¡®Mobile WiMAX Wave2 Base Station¡¯ and ¡®Mobile Station,¡¯ the Express card type device, using Samsung¡¯s own Mobile WiMAX Wave2 modem chipset, which will be commercially used in the Sprint-Nextel Mobile WiMAX service later this year.
Mobile WiMAX Wave2 products introduce a number of new features including Multi-In Multi-Out (MIMO) and Smart Antenna. These features enable the fastest data rate, up to 37Mbps for downlink and 10Mbps for uplink, among currently available mobile technologies in service. At this speed users can download 3MB MP3 music files within 0.7 seconds and 700MB movie files within less than 3 minutes.
¡°We are very excited to obtain the Mobile WiMAX Wave2 certification from WiMAX Forum by successfully passing all rigorous certification tests. This once again shows Samsung¡¯s leadership in Mobile WiMAX technologies.¡± said Geesung Choi, President of Telecommunication Business at Samsung Electronics.
¡°I am confident in Mobile WiMAX as one of the most promising solutions for mobile broadband services. This important milestone exhibits the technology is ready and mature and Samsung will accelerate the commercialization with in the global market to open new era of mobile broadband world,¡± Mr. Choi said.
“The WiMAX Forum would like to thank Samsung and the other member companies that have worked so hard to achieve today¡¯s milestone and enabling the Forum to continue to reach critical objectives with the ongoing certification of Mobile WiMAX equipment,” said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum during a press conference at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress in Amsterdam.
“Samsung has played an important role in WiMAX Forum¡¯s success of driving market momentum by enabling us to move closer to delivering on our plan to certify more than 100 Mobile WiMAX products in 2008. Our seven independent WiMAX Forum certification labs are on now online to manage the anticipated increase of products to be submitted for certification.
The Wave2 certification designation today together with Wave1 certification award in April this year puts Samsung in a very few elite class of vendors which possess both certified commercial Mobile WiMAX Wave1 and Wave2 product lineups.
Samsung¡¯s Mobile WiMAX Wave2 solutions are expected to be commercially available through KT and SKT in South Korea from later this year and UQ Communications in Japan from next summer.
The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN standard. Currently, the organization has more than 500 member companies including service providers, regulators, equipment vendors, chip vendors, and content providers.
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Motorola has been selected by TDF a leading European provider of network services to broadcasters and telecom operators, to design and deploy 802.16e WiMax networks for several regions in France where HDRR, a TDF subsidiary, holds WiMax frequency licenses.
The three-year frame agreement with TDF follows an initial pilot at the end of 2006 and successful deployments in Loiret, Sarthe and Limousin regions which enabled the roll-out of innovative networks enabling the delivery of high speed broadband access to end users.
TDF and its partners, including local governments, deliver a wholesale broadband service to retail ISPs which in turn provide broadband data as well voice over IP services to businesses and consumers.
By selecting Motorola’s 802.16e WiMax solution, TDF customers will enjoy advantages of the new WiMax services in the future.
Motorola provides deployment, integration and support services to TDF in addition to WiMAX equipment such as WiMAX Access Points (the WAP 400 series), and outdoor and indoor customer premises equipment such as the CPEo 400 series and CPEi 200 series.
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The Brazilian telecoms regulator Anatel has officially cancelled its planned auction of WiMAX spectrum in the 3.5GHz and 10.5GHz bands, reports BNamericas citing a statement from the watchdog last Friday. In total, 101 bidding groups were consulted on the matter, Anatel said, of which around 80 supported its plan to cancel the process. Eight groups objected to the cancellation while 13 did not offer up an opinion. The main reason for the decision was the outdated minimum prices of 3.5GHz spectrum, it said. The bidding rules were published in July 2006, in accordance with telecoms rules in force at the time.
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Fresh from securing a network expansion contract with GrameenPhone, Huawei has announced that it is negotiating with Warid, Bangladesh’s four largest mobile operator by subscribers, reports local newspaper The Daily Star. ‘We are in talks to sign a deal with Warid. But some time is required to complete the deal,’ said an official of Huawei. Meanwhile, in separate but related news, during his visit to Dhaka last month, Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH), said Banglalink is committed to 3G W-CDMA rather than WiMAX. ‘We will stick to 3G. Because, we believe, it is the continuation of GSM. It’s much easier for us to upgrade our technology by adopting 3G rather than WiMAX,’ he said.
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Sprint has come out and stated that the tests carried out in Baltimore and Washington D.C. to test out WiMax have been very successful. They confirmed that WiMax is on schedule to launch in 2008.
The tests were carried out by Sprint and Samsung to test out the mobility as well as speed of mobile WiMax.
Sprint continues to work hard to build up its Xohm mobile broadband Internet service. This service is going to support the mobile WiMax standard.
Xohm president Barry West stated “The collaboration with Samsung and our partners has created a WiMax ecosystem that has now proven that it can deliver this new technology to the marketplace well ahead of any feasible alternative. This is a major step towards launch readiness.”
Though mobile WiMax is new, many believe that it could become a huge hit in the U.S. once it is rolled out.
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Not a week passes by now without new clues of Sprint’s fate appearing; will Sprint even be around as a relatively significant brand in five years?
Following the news of Sprint seeing a decline in subscriber numbers in the first quarter of 2008 and subsidies being slashed on select cell phones, a user on sprintusers.com today posted an interesting piece of information:
“Sprint reserves the right to limit throughput speeds or amount of data transferred and to deny, terminate, modify, or suspend service if usage exceeds 5GB per month in total or 300MB/month while off-network roaming. Check your subscriber agreement rights on Sprint.com”
At first sight, even a trained eye could take this as a way of alienating its data subscribers, but is that Sprint’s real intention? We don’t think so. In the long run, there’s no point in offering attractive tethered modem services via EV-DO at the same time as you’re going to sell subscriptions for a new nationwide Mobile WiMAX network. So this could be a sign of Sprint streamlining its current services, before adding another.
However, if we have the option between a boring Mobile WiMAX device with limited possibilities on a Power-Vision-Xohm-Nextel-Direct-Connect subscription, and a fancy Mobile WiMAX device with unlimited possibilities (we assume Google will ensure openness) on a Clearwire Mobile WiMAX subscription, we’ll obviously choose the latter.
Only time will tell whether we in five years own and use a Sprint branded device. And that’s the main reason why Sprint owns 51% of Clearwire. They’ll win either way.
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BSNL to invest Rs 5,000 cr on WiMax project (India)
