RIL-owned Infotel running WiMax trials

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Reliance Industries owned RIL-Infotel, which is the pan-India winner of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum, has started trials of WiMax service as per industry sources.

RIL-Infotel has installed, as per the source, five WiMax base station in which three are from Alvarion and two are from Samsung. The company is checking interoperability among various BTSs and devices along with factors that hold key to a business.

However, this is contrary to the press statement made by RIL at the time of announcing the acquisition of Infotel, when it said that it would go for LTE and mentioned nothing about the WiMax trial.

Also read: Mukesh Ambani is back in telecom space

“A single 20 MHz TDD spectrum when used with LTE (Long Term Evolution) has the potential of providing greater capacity when compared to the existing communication infrastructure in the country,” read the press statement issued on June 11, 2010.

Infotel won BWA spectrum in all 22 telecom circles across the country for a whopping Rs. 12,847.77 crore. On the same day RIL had announced to acquire 95 per cent stake in the company.

When CIOL contacted RIL for update on these trials, the spokesperson denied to give a specific update on the matter.

“At this point of time, I am neither saying yes nor denying. We will provide updates only after reaching a certain point on the activities that we are doing,” said the spokesperson.

The success of WiMax trials being run by RIL-Infotel will be a big blow to Qualcomm, the evangelist of TD LTE technology, which is expected to make foray into global market by late 2012 or early 2013.

At present TD LTE devices are not available to support the need of telecom companies for immediate roll out of wireless broadband services. On the other hand, WiMax over the years have developed an eco-system of equipment and devices to support its roll out.

Samsung has installed about 70,000 BTS across the world for Mobile WiMax networks with a potential to serve about 50 million Mobile WiMax subscriber base in Samsung Infra supported networks.

The other player, Alvarion, an Israeli vendor whose BTSs are said to be used by RIL-Infotel, has more than 50 WiMax networks across the globe.

According to WiMax Forum, there are more than 300 WiMax devices of all types like datacards, Indoor CPE, WiMax Hand Sets etc, already certified by it for use in more than 540 mobile WiMax networks in 140 countries.

There are more addition expected by WiMax Forum to this existing range of devices.

“Triband devices on 2.3, 2.5 and 3.5 Ghz and wider RF channels of 20 Mhz would hit the market from mid 2011 onwards,” said WiMax Forum spokesperson in an interaction with CIOL.

Samsung, Mediatek, Intel, Beceem, Wavesat, Sequans, GCT, Runcom, PICO CHIP are some of the companies involved in designing and making of chipset for WiMax devices.

Name
Email
Comment Here
Code Verification

3G or 4G? Which is your preference

Facebook mkt makers' losses at least $100 mn

NBC to buy Microsoft's MSNBC.com?

India adds 6.50 mn new GSM subscribers

Indian PC market grew 6.6 p.c. in Q1: Gartner

Why 122,680 Facebookers 'like' Nirmal Baba?

Do you think IT employees need unions?

Book your trip to Vaishno Devi online

Can Aamir Khan bring down female foeticide?

DataWind terms Aakash II launch a revolution

Subscribe to PCQuest for iPad & Android tablets

Register Free at DQ Top 20 Online portal & get insights on the Indian IT Industry

Enterprise IT News and Analysis in your inbox

Subscribe to the free PCQuest newsletter

Do you think IT employees need unions?

Arun and Cipla - no ladders, no snakes

Cyber attacks: Have India's neighbours turned culprits?

Personal cloud will eclipse PC: Gartner

SMEs don't give much importance to security

Sponsored Links

Custom Site

Demo Downloads On :

1-Click News Updates