Bridging the last mile broadband connectivity gap seems to be the latest craze among Indian telcos. No one, not especially the giants of the the likes which include Bharti, Vodafone, Reliance Communications (RCom) and Tatas, wants to be left behind. They want to try their hands on every technology they can afford to.
Gone are the days of dial-up connections, where one used to get an Internet connectivity speed of up-to 56 Kbps, that too over a wireline. Today one talks of megabits over kilobits, and that too over wireless connection, for data, voice and text.
Be it LTE (Long Term Evolution), WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), 3G (Third Generation)or WiFi (Wireless Fidelity), the wireless future of India shines bright.
On one hand, where the second generation of communication technology, 2G/2.5G, is set to give way for the third generation (3G). On the other, 4G technologies, such as LTE (the surprise factor of the BWA spectrum) and WiMAX, have also booked themselves a berth in India's race for wireless networks. Not to be left behind is WiFi, one of the longest serving wireless technologies in India today.
Theoretically, WiFi (IEEE 802.11g) can transmit up to 54 megabits per second (Mbps), whereas, WiMAX ((IEEE 802.16e) can provide a speed of up to 70 megabits per second. LTE allows a peak download speed of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) on mobile phones, whereas, 3G will provide up to 20Mbps.
Considering the advanced versions of these technologies, Wireless N ((IEEE 802.11n) of WiFi, which will be rolled out this year, is said to give a speed of 300 Mbps, whereas, WiMAX 2.0, (IEEE 802.16m) will provide a throughput of over 350+ Mbps. Now coming to LTE, both Rel 10 and Advanced are said to give much more speed than its predecessor.
So, among these technology siblings, who will win the race?
Sudarshan Boosupalli, country head, Ruckus Wireless, notes: “All technologies will co-exist. Today, the question is not about speed, but who will reach the market first and how affordable will their technology be for masses.”
Along with affordability, subscribers also seek reliability, that of network and service. We are all very well aware of slow Internet and dropping calls, irrespective of service providers. So if the same gets repeated over 3G, it will seriously damage the 2G successor's traction into the market.
Today India needs better coverage, which means better RF management, cellular network, towers etc. Thus, there will be a huge disappointment with 3G during the early commercial deployment. Lack of subscribers will make service providers unhappy with the 3G revenue and lack of proper coverage will make subscribers unhappy with the service.
Another factor that will decide the fate of a technology is the cost factor, especially when technologists vouch for rural connectivity as the major drive behind the success of wireless technologies. India, owing to its high price sensitive nature, has one of the lowest call tariffs than anywhere else in the world. Moreover, a smartphone comes for a few hundred bucks in gray markets, which resulted in a major setback for many of the great handset makers in India and forced them to go back to their marketing and pricing strategies and take a re-look. The same applies to 3G and 4G technologies as well.
If the prices are too high, people are not going to use the services. For India, 2.5G and 3G are good solutions for next five-ten years. The reason being simple - cost effective services. With regard to LTE, the equipment cost will be very high.
Although WiMAX Forum claims that there are over 300 WiMAX embedded devices in the market and yet more are under production, the pricing strategy is not yet very clear. On the other hand, Qualcomm assures that LTE modems already exist in the market and handsets are expected next year. And similar to WiMAX's case here too the pricing strategy is very vague, since the bids are only happening right now.
Though Intel assures that WIMAX embedded handset prices will be cheaper and on a par with 3G, it will take some more time for the market to come to a consensus in terms of pricing. Moreover, it goes without saying that apprehension over high price of 3G and 4G technologies is not far from truth.
How many clients laptops, mobile phones, have WiMAX chips embedded on them. Whereas, almost all devices have WiFi chips on it. So it makes sense to have a WiFi embedded device, whereas, it is also considerable to have a WiMAX chip in the backhaul, to sort out traffic. If ever so, cost of WiMAX chip is very high today.
Boosupalli further adds that in a country like India, which doesn't have enough copper or fiber networks, it is a tedious job to dig and put cables across the country.
However, with WiFi one doesn't need spectrum or cables. So, as long as you get good speed, you don't think what is the technology that is going at the back end. A study on WiMAX and WiFi deployments finds that WIFi can be rolled out at one-fifth of the cost of the former
Maybe, eventually, the cost of every technology will come down, similar to what happened in Japan, one of first markets to roll out 3G. Since the deployment of 3G services in 2003-04, the cost of 3G handsets and infrastructure has declined significantly in Japan.
However, at that point, what needs to be looked at is whether there will be any other better and affordable technology coming in at that time
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