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July 02, 2010

WiMAX Forum Asks Indian Telecom Operators to Deploy WiMAX

By Shamila Janakiraman
TMCnet Contributor

The WiMAX Forum (News - Alert) announced that the Indian government’s recent completion of the BWA spectrum was commendable. It said that this initiative was a strong step towards providing broadband access and all associated benefits to the nation’s 1.2 billion citizens.
“WiMAX is ready for Indian operators to deploy now,” said Ron Resnick (News - Alert), president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum.
“Only 9 million citizens throughout India have access to broadband, but within six months WiMAX networks and services could be deployed and commercially available – helping the Indian government to pursue an accelerated path to achieve and exceed their goal of connecting more than 100 million broadband users by 2014,” Resnick added.
It was revealed that WiMAX operators with 2.3 GHz spectrum holdings will form the fastest growing sector in the WiMAX ecosystem. To date, the WiMAX Forum has tracked more than 50 commercial deployments in this spectrum band and 593 total WiMAX deployments in 149 countries.
Also 2.5 GHz remains a critically important band among WiMAX operators. The growing number of deployments in 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz band will help Indian operators and consumers to realize volume pricing benefits and also leverage the features of a rich ecosystem of devices.
The WiMAX Forum recently announced that the first 2.3 GHz set of products have achieved the WiMAX Forum Certified status. The availability of certified products in the frequency allocations of 2.3 and 2.5 GHz adopted by India are expected to ensure a faster time-to-market. This will enable certain advantages like global roaming capabilities. 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz base stations and end-user products are all commercially available today and are already deployed in markets across the globe, said official sources.
“We’ve enjoyed considerable success with 2.3 GHz WiMAX,” remarked Michael Lai, Chief Executive Officer of Packet One Networks, a subsidiary of Green Packet (News - Alert) and a member of the WiMAX Forum Board of Directors.
He also added that Packet One operates from Malaysia and has more than 170,000 subscribers being the country’s fastest growing wireless network. P1 WiMAX now covers over 40% of the West Malaysia population. He pointed out that this 4G WiMAX technology will be able to meet the broadband needs of India.
The WiMAX ecosystem is supported by the world’s leading technology and telecommunications companies spanning the entire Internet value chain from silicon to content. The WiMAX Forum advised Indian operators to leverage this tested technology and powerful ecosystem to optimize their broadband offerings to the Indian populace using WiMAX.
 
 

Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Shamila’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Juliana Kenny


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