www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A total of 257 billion rupees ($5.5 billion) has been paid by Infotel Broadband Services Pvt. and Aircel Ltd together to offer wireless broadband Internet services in India.  Infotel was the only company that managed to get the pan India license by winning in all 22 regions on sale, paying 128.5 billion rupees. Licenses in eight regions had been bought by Aircel for 34.38 billion rupees and Qualcomm Inc. and Bharti Airtel Ltd. each purchased four.

The forecast of 8.5% rise in the Indian economy has been the driving force behind the company’s investment as the growth will spur consumers to spend more on wireless products and services. The government raised 677.2 billion rupees from last month’s auction of mobile-phone permits and the broadband auctions money add to this giving Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh more room to cut the fiscal deficit.

Analysts feel that this is their chance to deploy a wireless broadband network across the country as Wireless broadband penetration is very low and there’s huge scope for that market. Eleven companies battled for two bandwidth slots in each of 22 regional zones in the auction for BWA, or broadband wireless access. Wimax, a wireless broadband technology can be used by the companies through this spectrum.

33.1 billion rupees for the permits will be paid by Bharti, India’s largest mobile-phone operator. Anil’s Reliance Communications Ltd on the other hand dropped out of the bidding for the permits after securing third- generation mobile-phone licenses in an earlier auction. 49.1 billion rupees for the rights has been paid by Qualcomm, the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, to buy licenses in areas including Delhi and Mumbai.

Customers will initially be computer owners because of the lack of WiMax mobile phones and according to analysts the presence of low-cost alternatives such as digital subscriber lines, or DSL, may be a barrier to recouping the funds spent on wireless broadband spectrum.