• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager
• BL Club
• Smartbuy
• Books

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth
• Events 2007

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Dr A. Paulraj

For his co-development of key technologies behind MIMO (Multiple In, Multiple Out), which sharply increases the speed of wireless systems, Dr A. Paulraj, Professor at the Information Systems Lab of Stanford University, US, was dubbed the ‘Father of WiMAX ’ by BusinessWeek magazine earlier this year. In India currently, to participate in the Stanford Engineering India Symposium and advise WiMAX planners, he shares his take on what WiMAX holds for India:

With the impending Broadband Wireless Access spectrum auctions in January 2009 (concurrent with 3G), India enters the exciting 4G era. WiMAX is the BWA technology already deployed in the US and Japan and is now ready for India. It delivers a blistering 20 Mbps peak speed to mobile and fixed terminals that far exceeds anything available from corporate LAN or home DSL today. In two-three years, WiMAX will begin to migrate the primary Internet access from the PCs today to shirt pocket or portable terminals.

WiMAX infrastructure will be similar to the current cellular systems. Cell sizes can range from 12 km in rural to less than 1 km in urban deployments. WiMAX can share passive infrastructure with current cellular operators. WiMAX terminals will range from Customer Premises Equipments (CPEs), USB dongles, PC cards, notebooks to cell phone-like devices to offer voice (VoIP) and Internet access. Essentially any applications that run on Internet Protocol today (or in the future) can be delivered efficiently over WiMAX. The big promise of WiMAX is that it will democratise Internet access, making it really cheap and affordable to hundreds of millions of Indians. Another critical role of WiMAX is in security applications such as video surveillance of sensitive locations such as air, rail and road terminals, hotels, etc. Even moving vehicles such as a metro bus can use WiMAX video monitoring.

WiMAX will be a Rs 100K Crore market in three-four years. Major Indian and foreign carriers are expected to bid for the spectrum offered for auction. Of course, recent problems in credit markets could mean some of the major but cash-strapped incumbent carriers will be weeded out.

With regard to vendors, the big names such as Motorola, Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent, NEC and Huawei will bid in the upcoming tenders. On the semiconductor side, Intel and Beceem (US company with R&D mostly in India) are the top world players and are also likely to enter the Indian market.

The challenges ahead are to keep the final spectrum price at reasonable levels at the end of the bid process. And service providers need to make judicious choice of suppliers, given the huge complexity of WiMAX technology and the relatively short track record of commercial deployments, unlike 3G which is already 10 years old. — Prof A. Paulraj, Stanford University.

More Stories on : Broadband | Technology | Telecommunications

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line