India WiMAX Update: Will WiMAX End up as Enterprise Last Mile?

Published on 5/1/2009 6:10:09 AM

India is often seen as a country that will be critical to mass market WiMAX adoption even as the more developed markets consider alternative wireless broadband technologies. WiMAX advocates say the technology is critical for bridging the digital divide and expanding the reach of Internet and broadband to rural areas. They are hopeful that once India goes ahead with the 3G and WiMAX spectrum action in the next few months, several operators and Internet service providers will launch WiMAX services that will make India among the largest deployments in the world. Their optimism also stems from the initiatives taken by government-owned BSNL which has launched WiMAX services in some parts of India and will be finalizing new partners in the next few weeks to take the wireless broadband technology across India. Many have termed BSNL’s WiMAX roll out as one of the largest deployments in the world. However, BSNL’s endorsement of a technology is neither the harbinger of a larger trend nor a benchmark for success. More worthwhile will be to see what private operators are doing with WiMAX.

While we surely need to wait for the spectrum auction to happen and some more development of on the WiMAX technology front to see how the market shapes up, in the interim it looks like that the leading Indian telcos – Bharti Airtel, Reliance and Tatas – have been using WiMAX to gain foothold in the lucrative enterprise market. Another telecom operator Aircel has positioned its WiMAX services for business customers.

Reliance Communications recently said that it proposes to use the WiMAX technology to provide last mile to its enterprise customers in more than 100 cities across India in financial year 2010. It has already augmented building connectivity program through deployment of WiMAX 802.16d technology in the top 10 Indian cities.

Similarly, India’s largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel which also has a growing fixed line and broadband business is more focused on the enterprise opportunity for WiMAX. “Today we are utilizing WiMAX only for our enterprise customers, but not for any mass usage,” President and CEO of Bharti Airtel Manoj Kohli recently told analysts after its fourth quarter results.

On the other hand Tata Communications, which claims a WiMAX subscriber base of 50000, is also focusing on enterprise users. The company, with a WiMAX related capex outlay of $500 million for three years ending FY12, has a network of 1,400 base stations across 140 cities. This, the company claims, is the largest WiMAX network in the world. The company will add 20 more cities to the network next year to meet its target of 200,000 subscribers by March 2010.It is noteworthy that none among Bharti, Reliance and Tata have out rightly rejected the idea of deploying WiMAX for mass consumption but they might find themselves more comfortable with other high speed access technologies like HSPA or emerging mobile broadband technologies like LTE. Their focus on 3G/4G mobile broadband technologies could slow down developments in WiMAX. Moreover, mainstream operators like Bharti do not consider WiMAX as a mature technology. “You know Bharti has a policy of going for technologies, which are well tested, which are open standards… We will wait for the international experience and then appropriately take a decision. Today we believe HSPA is really picking up very well across the world and has a great success story, so that obviously is our preference as we go into 3G, but WiMAX we are still watching,” Bharti’s Manoj Kohli recently said when asked about the company’s WiMAX plans. Similarly, Tatas may end up closer to LTE than WiMAX after their association with Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo. The Japanese operator recently successfully tested LTE in urban environments and is seen as one of the first operators that will deploy LTE commercially.