WiMAX ready to boost mobile internet in India: Samsung

Making a strong case for WiMAX as the perfect technology for speedy roll-out of mobile internet access in India, Korea-based Samsung Electronics has offered its services and expertise along with its global partners to Indian operators to boost broadband penetration.

“We have successfully deployed commercial mobile WiMAX networks in over three dozen countries in Asia, Americas and Europe, covering 15-crore people, which will go up to 30-crore by the end of this year.
Mobile WiMAX is suitable for India for its speedy deployment,” Samsung Electronics Vice-President (Global Sales and Marketing Team, Telecom Systems) Hung Song told The Hindu. Stating that they were already conducting WiMax-based trials for some BWA (broadband wireless access) spectrum winners, Dr. Song said: “WiMAX is a proven technology that is commercially available for the past five years.”

Referring to the ongoing debate between adoption of WiMAX and LTE (long term evolution) as future technology, Dr. Song said: “LTE as a technology is still evolving. Any new technology takes at least five years to get optimised...whereas WiMAX has already a proven technology. Moreover, trials for the next level of WiMAX, which would be identical to advanced version of LTE, are already on and it will be available for commercial deployment by the end of next year.”

Hung Song

Asserting that Indian operators cannot wait for a new technology after making huge investments in BWA spectrum auction, he said: “Waiting game will only curtail India's growth as global experts say fast roll-out of mobile broadband will add to India's GDP (gross domestic product). We are ready with low-cost devices that supports WiMAX, while we are also ready to speedy deployment installing one-lakh BTS (base transceiver station) a month.”

Pointing out that more than 160 operators in 76 countries were providing or were preparing to offer commercial mobile WiMAX services, Dr. Song said the effort was to bring together ‘G5' nations — the U.S., China, India, Japan and Korea — to show the way to the world how mobile WiMAX can trigger growth of world economy. “China and India can not only produce cost-effective WiMAX-ready devices but also create their own services and applications,” added Dr. Song.