WiMAX Forum Applauds Indian Government for WiMAX Spectrum Auction Announcement

(Top News, 14 Dec 2009)

The WiMAX Forum has renewed its call to the Indian government to enable the auction to happen on schedule in January 2010 and also take steps to release spectrum for WiMAX deployments in the 2.3GHz/2.5GHz frequency bands. According to the WiMAX Forum, every six months of delay in the auction process translates into $1 billion in lost revenue to the country’s economy

"WiMAX auctions should be done well ahead by de-linking the auction from the 3G auction process as the country needs broadband growth and wireless high speed Internet access now for the economic development of the Indian society," said Ron Resnick, President and Chairman of the WiMAX Forum. "India needs immediate and affordable broadband access to meet the aspirations and expectations of the younger generation who constitute 56 percent of the population. Today, there are 500 million mobile phone subscribers in India, but only 7.4 million have access to broadband connections. WiMAX represents the only viable option to achieve faster roll out of broadband services in order to meet the government’s targeted 100 million broadband users by 2014."

WiMAX is the first commercial technology specifically optimized for mobile broadband, which means delivery of broadband Internet anywhere an operator chooses to deploy for any service model, including fixed, portable, and mobile. Further, WiMAX provides a scalable and economical way to provide high-speed broadband Internet across India. Given its true broadband performance, early availability, cost advantages, government support and the upcoming auctions for the 2.3GHz frequency band, the WiMAX Forum projects the Indian WiMAX market including devices will be worth $13 billion by 2012. This forecast takes into account 27.5 million WiMAX users, or 19 million WiMAX subscribers in 2012.

According to the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington D.C., U.S.A., for every percentage point increase of broadband penetration, employment typically increases by 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent per year. Indian Chambers of Commerce also predicted that broadband growth by 2014 for 100 million subscribers would create 2 million direct jobs and 3 million indirect jobs. Applied to India’s workforce that model would translate conservatively to the creation of more than two million jobs nationally per 12 million added broadband subscribers.

According to Infonetics Research, WiMAX will accrue nearly 28 million Indian subscribers by 2013 – exceeding the combined WiMAX subscribers in Brazil, China and Russia. “As one of the largest ICT markets in the world, the Indian government has realized the importance of broadband, and made broadband a national priority,” Resnick added. “India has a unique and golden opportunity to take a leadership position amongst BRIC countries with providing broadband services to its massive population.”

BSNL commitment grows along with meaningful WiMAX global progress
The WiMAX Forum has also congratulated BSNL on its growing footprint of WiMAX services for both rural and urban centers. By making WiMAX available today in India, BSNL has attracted the attention of many major ecosystem players. Of the five companies that bid for BSNL’s franchisee contract, three of them include WiMAX Forum members Alvarion, Cisco, and ZTE. Further, many device manufacturers are standing by with WiMAX products waiting for India to launch its commercial networks, with pricing either equal to or lower than existing 3G devices on the market today. Among the more than 300 WiMAX products commercially available, globally there are more than 50 models of embedded WiMAX notebooks available from leading computer manufacturers.

In addition to news about the India WiMAX opportunity, the WiMAX Forum also announced several updates on how WiMAX is changing lives today with affordable, multi-megabit broadband worldwide. Recently, the number of WiMAX deployments reached 518 networks in 146 countries. Regionally, Africa led with 110 deployments and Central/Latin America closely followed with 102 deployments. Asia-Pacific reached 82 deployments and Western Europe and Eastern Europe host 69 and 84 networks. North America and the Middle East grew to 51 and 20 deployments, respectively.

In addition to an increase in the number of networks tracked by WiMAX Forum, many of the already established WiMAX networks continue to expand rapidly. Examples include Yota, which reached 200,000 subscribers on its Russian network in October 2009 since its commercial service launch in July 2009 and hit the breakeven point for its network, and Packet One Networks, which reached 130,000 subscribers in its first year of service launch. Clear, Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner Cable all have also made strides in expanding their networks this year, with multiple U.S. city launches set to come by the end of 2009 and nearly 200,000 subscribers to-date. UQ Communications plans to cover more than half of the Japanese population by the end of December 2009, and KT’s Mobile WiMAX network already covers more than half of the Korean population.