“Not only the interiors, but entire India has the need for BWA since even in major cities, wired network has very limited coverage. As part of leap-frogging technology from the current outdated systems (34 million wire-line customers across the country and the wireless technology being the 2G technology from the early 1990s), BWA is imperative for India if the country wants to grow. Depending upon the strategies of investment and migrations, the 3GPP WCDMA/HSPA is very appropriate at the current time followed by the 3GPP LTE at a suitable time in future, augmented by WiMAX 802.16m at selected places. The key issue for deployment is the backhaul. In addition to the access and the core infrastructure, backhaul is needed across all entities—access to core as well as across the whole public data network (PDN). Setting up an effective PDN is another major challenge,” says Dr Borkar.
He adds that in India, the transition to next-generation BWA networks is likely to be driven by service providers, who in turn are driven by consumer demand for data services and average revenue per user (ARPU) from data. The recent trends show that the demand for mobile data is showing a steady growth in the country. Therefore it is expected that the latest 4G technologies will be introduced in India in two to three years in the face of growing consumer demand. The challenges for service providers are more likely to be spectrum availability and short-term incentives to invest, particularly in rural areas where the ARPU is likely to be lower than in urban areas.
Shyam Ananthnarayan, vice president-communications and wireless technology business, Tata Elxsi, sums up, “BWA promises to help every section of the society through better access to information, education and new employment opportunities to Indians in both urban and rural areas. India has a special need for BWA to connect the people of every village, town, semi-rural, semi-urban and urban area to bring them on to one platform. It is expected that both WiMAX and LTE will find a place in a wireless nation. While LTE seems to be a natural migration path for operators in urban areas, WiMAX is likely to find a place in semi-urban and rural areas of the country.”
The author is a technically-qualified freelance writer, editor and hands-on mom based in Singapore
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