Qualcomm today announced that Global Holding Corp. and Tulip Telecom Ltd. as the initial investor partners in its broadband wireless access venture in India, reports Light Reading.
Global Holdings, the parent company of wireless tower company GTL, and Tulip, an enterprise data services specialist, are paying $28.9 million apiece for 13 percent stakes in the Indian wireless venture.
Qualcomm recently won 2.3GHz spectrum licenses in four service circles — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala, and Haryana and plans to build a network based on TD-Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. But, under Indian law, it needs local partners to apply for the license to build and operate the networks.
FDD-LTE and TD-LTE are making some recent gains:
- Ericsson conducted the first trials of LTE TDD in India recently. The first data call was successfully performed at the Experience Centre, Ericsson Forum, in Gurgaon, India, using the 2.3GHz band.
- Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia jointly conducted the world’s first end-to-end LTE data call on the 800 MHz frequency band. It demonstrated the end-to-end interoperability of Nokias’ LTE infrastructure with their multi-mode, multi-band LTE Modem RD-3.
- Huawei deployed the world’s first TD-LTE trial network at the World Expo in Shanghai this year.
- Motorola’s TD-LTE is being demonstrated at the World Expo with Motorola talking up their TD-LTE/WiMAX solutions.
- Qualcomm is a big proponent of TD-LTE, which shares much of the COFDM technology used by Mobile WiMAX (802.16e).
- China Mobile is emphasizing TD-LTE technology in its equipment procurement.
- NTT DOCOMO will begin verifying its new LTE commercial network this June in Tokyo, prior to the full-scale launch of extra-high-speed LTE commercial service in December. DOCOMO expects to confirm 5 MHz-bandwidth throughput for 37.5 Mbps downlinks and 12.5 Mbps uplinks, and later 10 MHz-bandwidth throughput for maximum 75 Mbps downlinks and 25 Mbps uplinks in selected test areas.
On the other hand, WiMAX is moving ahead:
- VMAX launched their commercial WiMAX network in Taiwan this March, and now covers almost 3 million people, according to Intel.
- Huawei gear is used in some 65 commercial WiMAX deployment contracts across the globe, making it the number one WiMAX provider.
- Clearwire’ s 4G networks in Hawaii and Seattle – provided by Huawei – are the world’ s first to adopt 4T4R MIMO technology, and can be upgraded to Beamforming through software upgrades.
- Motorola plans to support “802.16e Enhanced” features in its WiMAX product roadmap, working with ArrayComm. Enhanced WiMAX aims to increase coverage, reduce interference, improve single-user throughput, as well as enable a reuse of one for WiMAX.
Related Dailywireless articles include; India’s Broadband Auction: It’s Done, Yota Dumps WiMAX, Clearwire: New Mobile Hotspots, Clear: No Limits, WiMAX Forum: Not Dead Yet, WiMAX Forum: In Trouble?, Sprint’s WiMAX Phone Launched, SK Telecom Buys 25% of Packet One, Compare “4G” Carriers in the U.S., LTE for Sprint? and MIMO: The Paper War
