Wireless Broadband To Penetrate Indian Rural Areas

The Fifth International Conference and Exhibition of WiMax India 2008 organised by Bharat Exhibitions was recently inaugurated in New Delhi. As per a statement made by R N Prabhakar, member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) at the inauguration ceremony, the Indian telecommunications service providers will witness much better and enhanced services in the days to come.

“In the Indian context, the most essential thing is to make such services affordable to a wider section of the public at a reasonable cost. The next phase of expansion of mobile services should be in the rural areas. Telecom policies should encourage service providers to push more and more into the interior of the country and develop business models for the rural areas,” he said.

Soumitra Sana, India president, Motorola stressed upon the fact that WiMax is changing the way the telecommunications industry is looking at connecting people. “It is placing the world on the threshold of a total transformation in communications,” he said. During this event, Motorola displayed its WiMax Forum certified base station and different types of CPEs.

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According to the telecom industry representatives attending the one day conference, the advantage of WiMax, a wireless access technology with high frequency enabling triple play on Personal Computers, notebooks and other customer end devices was that it was a cost-effective, fast and easy-to-deploy option in the market today.

During the proceedings of the Conference it was felt that emerging telecom markets like India were adopting WiMAX technology across the entire spectrum of operator profiles like telecom service operators, cable operators, 2G, 3G and even new entrants.

While WiMax and 3G would be playing complimentary roles, it was felt that besides the cost of the service, the quality of the service too is an important factor. “Today accessing the Internet in India is as costly as $10.5, which has checked the Internet penetration level to just 5.3 percent inhabitants. More Internet users are being added every year on mobiles than the cumulative wired base,” said Jagbir Singh, Group CTO – Mobility, Bharti Airtel. “With the obvious benefits from wireless broadband in terms of costs, reliability, easy access etc., the recent WiMax and 3G policies would help the rapid spread of wireless broadband into the interior of the country,” Singh further added.

WiMax India Forum president C S Rao said that with the recent government initiatives rural wireless broadband would become a reality.

Rapid spread of WiMax to provide broadband to the entire country was the theme of several other telecom experts at the conference.