Tikona to invest Rs 500 cr on wireless broadband

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Tikona Digital Networks (TDN), a player in the field of next-generation wireless broadband services for home and enterprise customers in India, today announced that it would invest Rs 500 crore on wireless broadband service, Wi-Bro, to expand its network in 50 cities of country by end of this calendar year.

“We will Rs 500 crore in building our network across 50 cities in this calendar year. This funding will be done by our three investors namely Glodman Sachs, Indivison and Oak Investments,” said Prakash Bajpai, CEO and managing director, Tikona Digital Network while announcing the company’s broadband service in Delhi.

TDN has started offering its broadband service in 10 top cities of India, including four metros, and plans to scale it up in other 40 cities by the end of this year.

“We have covered 35 per cent of area in Mumbai and 15 per cent of area in Delhi has also been covered. We are expanding rapidly. By the end of this financial year, TDN will have presence in 35 cities with pan-area coverage in some of the top 10 cities. In NCR we will complete coverage in another six to seven months,” elaborated Bajpai.

TDN claims to have the capacity of 3.5-4 million users at present. It is using de-licensed spectrum in frequency band of 5.8 Ghz and 2.4 Ghz, which has helped the company to keep the price competitive to wireline broadband service provider.

“We have built up intelligent network to deduct interference and efficiently use available unlicensed spectrum. We have circuit breaker plan in which a customer will not be billed over mentioned limit, even for 2mbps plan,” he said.

“TDN is charging only Rs 500 from customers as installation fee and then charges will be applicable as per his plan. MIMO technology available in our product will deduct direction of user and reach him irrespective of any interference and obstruction,” added Bajpai.

Yugal K Sharma, national director, Business Operation, TDN added that a refundable fee of Rs 300 will be charged from customers in case he opts for circuit breaker plan of 2mbps.

TDN has said that there is no need of any kind of wiring to install modem or nailing of router. The company claims that router being provided to the customer will be compatible with the customer device.

On security issues, Bajpai mentioned that TDN is the first wireless broadband service that is complying with the directive of Department of Telecom to provide router authenticated by his company.

“Security is our responsibility. Our Wi-Bro service is also bundled with anti-virus solution to enhance PC security,” said Bajpai.

TDN claims that Wi-Bro is powered with 4G technologies namely OFDM and MIMO and would provide symmetric data transfer of 2 mbps.