Tata is rolling out Telsima WiMAX gear in 110 cities

Tata is rolling out Telsima WiMAX gear in 110 cities, including some of the world’s largest metropolitan markets: Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi and Chennai. Unlike BSNL’s rollout of Soma gear in January, the WiMAX rollout will focus on enterprise services rather than residential, but in the 15 largest markets, Tata will also offer residential broadband services. The deployment also differs in spectrum used. While Soma is using the global 2.5 GHz band used by Sprint and Clearwire, Tata’s deployment is in 3.3 GHz, close to the 3.5 GHz bands identified for WiMAX in Europe, but in 12-MHz channels.

Tatas to invest $500 mn for WiMax equipment

5 Mar, 2008
NEW DELHI: Tata Communications on Tuesday said that the company will investment $500 million dollars for its wireless broadband venture or WiMax services over the next three years. The company has also said that it has given the contract to Telsima of Sunnyvale, California for supply of WiMax equipment.

“The company will invest 500 million dollars by 2010 in Wimax technology and is in talks with investors to sell minority stake in retail business,” Tata Communications retail business unit president Shankar Prasad told reporters here.

Tata Communications’s plan is to connect 200,000 retail customers using WiMax by March 2009 and also rollout wireless high-speed internet services in 110 cities for its enterprise customers and 15 cities for retail customers this year, the company said.
Tata Communications was the first company to launch broadband services on the WiMax platform on a large scale for retail consumers in India. In the initial phase, the company’s WiMax network will offer broadband internet access and content services to enterprises and residential customers in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, and Kolkata.

In fact, as per data provided by the company, Tata Communications currently serves over 5,000 enterprise and retail customers across ten cities where it offers this service.

While India’s telecom (read mobile) is booming, its braodband sector is witnessing rather slow growth and is way behind the targets set by the Department of Telecom. India has just under 3.5 million braodband users as of January end according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

While WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is still an evolving technology, it is still considered a threat to third generation mobile services. As per global industry experience, WiMax offers data speeds that are 10-30 times faster than 3G. To put this in perspective, the data speeds of 3G networks are over five times faster than those offered by 2G cellular networks that telcos in India currently use.

WiMAX equipment market up 46% in 2007, forecast to hit $7.7B in 2011

The WiMAX market sequentially grew 11% for the quarter and 46% for the year, with worldwide sales of fixed and mobile WiMAX equipment hitting just under $800 million in 2007, says Infonetics Research in its latest "WiMAX and Mesh Network Equipment and Devices" report.

WiMAX has been deployed in more than 80 countries worldwide and commercial networks will continue to grow in number and size in 2008, the report shows. Infonetics forecasts the WiMAX market to grow to $7.7 billion in 2011.

"Several recent developments are giving a boost to the WiMAX market," said Richard Webb, wireless analyst for Infonetics Research. "Among the most significant developments: Cisco's acquisition of mobile WiMAX vendor Navini Networks, the market entrance of specialist ASN gateway vendor WiChorus, the launch of WiMAX phones and Ultra Mobile PCs, and the new Open WiMAX initiative, which promotes disruptive, all-IP open WiMAX architecture, and should lead to best-of-breed solutions with inter-vendor interoperability."

Other highlights from the report:

-- Mobile WiMAX equipment grew in high double-digit percents every
quarter of 2007
-- Worldwide sales of ASN gateways, which aggregate traffic from mobile
WiMAX base stations, grew nearly 10-fold from 2006 to 2007
-- The number of worldwide WiMAX subscribers (fixed and mobile) topped
2.2 million in 2007, led by the Asia Pacific region; the majority are fixed
WiMAX subscribers
-- Alvarion maintains its lead in worldwide fixed WiMAX equipment revenue
share in 2007, followed by Airspan
-- Motorola is the leader in worldwide mobile WiMAX equipment revenue
share in 2007, followed by Samsung