High speed Internet connectivity is still considered a luxury for a lot of countries, especially in India.
With just over a million broadband subscribers in a country of more than one billion people, only the best off in the big cities can afford and take advantage of high speed Internet.
But with the venue of WiMax, the IEEE 802.16e standard for wide area wireless broadband connectivity, there might just be hope for more Indians to connect. Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL), a leading international telecom service provider headquartered in Mumbai, already had deployed WiMax infrastructure in 65 Indian cities.
Regulations in that country are making it a little difficult to easily implement the technology. Globally, bands centered at 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz have been approved for WiMax, but India’s 3.5GHz ban is locked up for use in the defence and space sectors. Some band in the 2.5GHz has been release for the 3rd generation cellphones, but not yet for the use of WiMax. While there are sufficient free band in that spectrum which could be allocated for WiMax technology, the telecom regulators are making the changes and implementation difficult.
With the infrastructural and regulatory challenges India is currently facing and the need to compete at a global level like many other countries, the engineers are working real hard at developing this new wireless technology. This could put India on the map as a world leader in the implementation of wireless WiMax high speed broadband connectivity. Technology developers feel India could contribute significantly to future versions of wireless broadband technology.
Regulations in that country are making it a little difficult to easily implement the technology. Globally, bands centered at 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz have been approved for WiMax, but India’s 3.5GHz ban is locked up for use in the defence and space sectors. Some band in the 2.5GHz has been release for the 3rd generation cellphones, but not yet for the use of WiMax. While there are sufficient free band in that spectrum which could be allocated for WiMax technology, the telecom regulators are making the changes and implementation difficult.
With the infrastructural and regulatory challenges India is currently facing and the need to compete at a global level like many other countries, the engineers are working real hard at developing this new wireless technology. This could put India on the map as a world leader in the implementation of wireless WiMax high speed broadband connectivity. Technology developers feel India could contribute significantly to future versions of wireless broadband technology.
If we can engineer wireless infrastructure – both Wi-Fi and WiMax – to substantially augment capacity for handling Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), so that operators can make money on data services and offer voice calls for free, then we’d have found the killer application for this technology. (Professor K.V.S Hari of the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore, a coauthor of the IEEE 802.16e standard).
I think it will be well worth it keeping an eye on this country over the next few years to see what comes out of this!
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