WiMAX -- A Way Forward In India

By the WiMAX Forum

India is a huge market for broadband wireless services and offers immediate and enormous potential for growth. WiMAX is the only 4G broadband technology compatible with the 2.3 GHz BWA spectrum in India that today enjoys widespread global deployment along with a mature ecosystem of vendors, devices and applications. It offers Indian consumers both fixed and mobile high speed access to all internet services. WiMAX already powers a wide array of terminal devices today, from notebooks, dongles, CPEs, handhelds, and home/business VoIP gateways to the latest Smartphone's, personal hotspots, and machine to machine devices.

WiMAX has commercial networks in 149 countries today including Clearwire – Sprint in USA; KT and SKT in Korea; UQ in Japan; Imagine in Europe; VMAX and Vee in Taiwan; Yota -Scartel and Comstar in Russia; Packet One in Malaysia; and Wateen in Pakistan to name just a few. WiMAX networks offer coverage to 630 million people today and are projected to reach over 800 million by the end of 2010. Mobile WiMAX subscriptions have reached 10 million globally today and are projected to grow to 130 million subscribers by 2014.

The WiMAX silicon, terminal and BS vendor ecosystem is comparable to 3G with more than 300 WiMAX Forum-certified devices. Leading vendors such as HTC, Motorola, Lenovo, Toshiba and Sony have launched WiMAX products. Strong vendor competition has already resulted in rapid price maturity that is unprecedented in previous mobile technologies. Open Patent Alliance also provides a low IPR burden, thus driving prices much lower and much faster than for 3G and 3GPP-LTE. WiMAX employs a flat network architecture and all-IP protocols that allow vendors to offer simple and low cost core networks. CAPEX cost is projected to be as low as Rs. 600 per subscriber.

The Indian government has completed auctioning 2 slots of 20 MHz each (TDD) for broadband in the 2.3 GHz band. One 20 MHz slot in the 2.5 GHz slot is already assigned to BSNL. Another slot in the 2.5 GHz band will be auctioned for private operators when inter-working issues with satellite services are cleared, which may happen in late 2010. The two 20 MHz slots in the 2.3 GHz band are as close as 2.5 MHz in some circles and as far as 20 MHz in other circles.

This white paper is targeted to the Indian broadband operators and aims to provide recommendations for optimal deployment of WiMAX. The recommendations include:
(a) Deployment options in a 20 MHz slot,
(b) Radio coexistence in the 2.3 GHz BWA allocation,
(c) WiMAX Release 1 enhancements, and
(d) Migration from WiMAX Release 1 profile to Release 2 profile.