MNP deadline to be missed by MTNL, BSNL (India)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: BSNL and MTNL, both state-controlled telcos in India will not be able to meet the deadline set by Indian government for supporting mobile number portability (MNP). Both the companies have said that the deadline of end of 2009 will not be met as the necessary upgrades to their systems will take few more months.
The Department of Telecoms earlier decided that key metro markets will offer MNP by the end of this year while the rest of the country will receive it from next June. However, the service was supposed to be available from the end of September but the problems with the regulators and operators lead to its delay.
According to TRAI chairman JS Sarma, the companies may be labeled as anti consumer if they fail to meet the deadline this time. As per the guidelines decided by the Department of Telecommunications, country will be geographically divided into two Number Portability Zones namely zone 1 & zone 2, with11 licensed service areas each.
The license for Zone 1 (Northern and Western India) was granted to Syniverse Technologies while MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions received the license for Zone 2 (Eastern and Southern India).
The selections were done on the basis of the guidelines for MNP service license.
Clearwire Rolls into a New City
Clearwire is spreading its WiMAX wings, with a service launch in the Greater Seattle area. The launch represents the company’s largest market rollout to date.
With the addition of the greater Seattle area, which encompasses Seattle, Everett, Tacoma and surrounding areas, Clearwire estimates its service is now available to more than 8 million people.
Clearwire first launched its pre-WiMAX service offering in 2004 to a limited audience. Following its initial service debut, the company has ramped up its rollout efforts to include 32 metro markets. Clearwire owns spectrum in the 2.5GHz band in the United States and the 3.5GHz band in Europe. The company boosts download speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps and upload speeds up to 256 kbps.
As of the beginning of September, Clearwire’s investment purse totaled more than $1 billion, with its most recent investment involving $900 million in funding led by Intel with contributions from Motorola. Clearwire decided to nix its initial public offering plans earlier this year.
At the time of the Motorola investment news, Clearwire announced Motorola also had signed on as one of its suppliers of wireless broadband equipment. Intel has agreed to work to enable the inclusion of WiMAX chipsets in next-generation mobile computing platforms, according to Clearwire.
Source- wirelessweek Wireless Mobile Telecom
