BSNL's WiMax rollout will begin from Ahmedabad

BSNL's WiMax rollout will begin from Ahmedabad

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), the country's largest public sector telecom company, will roll out worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMax) services beginning with Ahmedabad anytime this month, a company source told DNA Money. BSNL will spend Rs 1,600 crore on the deployment of WiMax, which enables wireless transmission of data. In 2007, the company pilot-tested the technology in eight cities across India. Though these tests were conducted in cities, BSNL would focus on deploying WiMax in rural areas, sources said. It has set a target of bringing 25,000 villages under the service within a year.

Information released by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) shows that BSNL received spectrum in the 2.5-MHz band in three circles. In the first phase, it will roll out mobile WiMax technology, for which it has partnered with SOMA Networks, in Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

However, one problem could be that the telecom company is deploying WiMax on frequency division duplex (FDD) mode that does not conform to international standards for the technology. FDD and time division duplex (TDD) are two different modes of downlinking and uplinking data in wireless transmissions. WiMax uses TDD, which is compatible with its equipment. Device-makers and solution firms also support that mode.

Besides, the deployment of the technology may be delayed due to DoT's dilly-dallying over the auction of Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) spectrum, on which WiMax works.

The finance ministry wants the reserve price for 3G and BWA spectrum doubled and the proposal is now with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). However, a Trai official denied receiving any such proposal from the finance ministry. Despite these, the government has set an ambitious target of 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010.