Industry watcher Gartner predicts India’s wireless market penetration will rise from nearly 20 percent now to over 60 percent by 2012. According to industry associations, India has 272 million wireless subscribers, of which 205 million are GSM subscribers, reports EE Times.
They predict Indian wireless subscribers will grow at a compound annual rate of 21 percent in the next four years, exceeding 735 million by 2012. Wireless revenues are expected to reach $37 billion, according to a new market analysis.
The Indian wireless market “will move to its next phase of evolution with the commercial launch of WiMax in the first quarter next year and the launch of 3G services by the middle of the second quarter next year,” said Madhusudan Gupta, a Gartner senior research analyst.
Tata Communications Ltd. is weeks away from choosing mobile WiMax infrastructure and customer premises equipment (CPE) vendors for its $500 million wireless broadband network in India, notes Unstrung.
The operator already claims to have the largest WiMax network in the world with 1,000 base stations deployed, using 802.16d (fixed WiMax) equipment from Telsima Corp.. Tata has signed up 10,000 customers since it launched in March this year. (See Tata Unleashes WiMax in India.)
Two new carriers are set to join 14 established wireless providers in the coming months. Hence, Gupta predicted heightened merger and acquisition activity during 2009 as India’s wireless industry consolidates around market leaders.
India will be the Largest Market for Mobile WiMAX by 2013, says Cantab Wireless, a wireless communications analyst company, based in Cambridge, UK.
The first and largest operator is the state-owned incumbent BSNL, notes Wikipedia, which is also the 7th largest telecom company in world. After the telecommunication policy was revised to allow private operators, companies such as Reliance, Bharti Telecom, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, MTNL, and BPL have entered the space.
Pakistan got its second mass scale Wimax operator Mobilink Infinity, writes Tee Emm in a note to DailyWireless.
“They are using Huawie Wimax 16e. Mobilink is the largest player in the cellular (GSM) market in Pakistan (owned by Orascom Telecom). Pakistan has 160 million population (half of it young adults) with 80 million cellular users. Before this we had Wateen (parent company Warid Telecom owned by Abu Dhabi Group) launching the largest commercial network, based on Motorola”, writes Tee Emm.
Last night, Charlie Rose had an interesting conversation with Naguib Sawiris, CEO of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Holding.
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