India To Have 6.9mn Mobile And Fixed WiMax by 2011: Gartner

Gartner has predicted that India will have 6.9 million mobile and fixed WiMax
connections by the end of 2011. It cautioned that India would remain a niche
market for this technology until 2009.

Although the Indian govern­ment is strongly promoting WiMax as a technology
to connect the country with broadband services, the country-specific mobile
broadband framework makes a nationwide rollout of WiMax cost prohibitive.

Naresh Singh, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner said, “By January 2008,
India had only 3.4 million broadband subscribers, far short of the target of
nine million by 2007 set by the broadband policy. Given the low levels of PC
penetration in India, there will be a limited demand for WiMax and the
country-specific mobile broad­band framework makes a nationwide rollout of WiMax
cost prohibitive.”

As mobile frequencies will not be available in the short term, Gartner does
not expect mobile WiMax rollouts to be available at larger scales before 2009,
at the earliest. Therefore, most WiMax connections in the short and mid-term
will be for nomadic or fixed wireless applications.

While the government policy proposes extensive rural coverage using WiMax,
Gartner believes that due to limitations of the spectrum allocation, the only
deployment for a sustained business case is to bring WiMax broadband
(point-to-point 802.16-2004) to rural centers in villages or schools, hospitals
and so on. From the access point, individual access will then be available via a
Wi-Fi mesh. In urban areas, WiMax can be utilized to offer mobile and
semi-mobile broadband to consumers and enterprise customers.

In November 2007, the Department of Telecommuni­cations (DoT) decided that it
would auction the 3G and WiMax spectrum. For 3G, the Indian government allocated
30MHz of bandwidth in the 2100MHz band.

Therefore, there will be three or six licenses released dependent on the
government's decision on whether 5MHz or 10MHz will be given to each license
holder. The government also decided to auction three WiMax licenses in the
2.5GHz band with 10MHz each.

The timeline and bandwidth of 3G and WiMax licenses will heavily impact the
future mobile broadband access marketshare in between 3G and WiMax. The
permission for mobility in the WiMax license will also influence the future of
its growth.

Singh said, “In the near-term, the Indian WiMax market is not very promising.
Gartner advises carriers to focus on the enterprise market and high-end
residential subscribers.”

Overall, the long term potential of the Indian WiMax market heavily relies on
spectrum allocation, WiMax ecosystem maturation, and the timeliness of WiMax and
3G licenses.

DQC News Bureau