Tata Communications, part of India’s largest industrial group, plans to spend up to $600m during the next five years to roll out WiMax in the hope of dramatically boosting the country’s tiny number of broadband internet connections. Tata expects to sign up at least 200,000 customers in 115 cities by next March and has signed a deal with California-based Telsima to supply the network.
India, with a population of 1.1 billion, has only 3.24 million broadband subscribers, reports the NY Times, although it has about 8m mobile subscribers.
By the end of 2008, Tata Communications plans to have enabled WiMAX retail broadband service in about 15 cities. In the initial phase, their WiMAX network will offer Broadband Internet access and content services to enterprise and residential customers in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, and Kolkata.
Tata says it is the first to launch broadband services on the WiMAX platform on a large scale for retail consumers in India. Tata Communications, based in India, is a leading global provider of communications. They selected Telsima Corporation to provide their WiMAX gear.
Among the bullet points:
- Over 5,000 Enterprise and Retail customers are already up in ten cities with plans to capture 200,000 customers in the retail segment in FY 2009
- Bangalore is unwired for Retail customers; with over 600 base station sectors
deployed. - Tata plans to roll out WiMAX in 110 cities for Enterprise and 15 Cities for
Retail Segment by 2008 - Telsima WiMAX solutions were selected for the largest deployment; with 3000 base station sectors being deployed.
“WiMAX enables broadband services in a cost effective, decentralized manner in India where a majority of the country is not covered by wired infrastructure, said Shankar Prasad, President, Tata Communications’ Retail Business Unit.
“Inflection points create new winners”, said Alok Sharma, Telsima’s CEO. “WiMAX combines disruptions in Radio Frequency and Internet Protocol technologies to support new cost structures that enable the proliferation of wireless broadband telecommunications services into new markets”, he explained.
“Telsima has capitalized upon this opportunity and delivered the largest and most advanced WiMAX deployments in the world.”
