With the completion of the 3G and broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum auctions, the sector is gearing up to replicate the success of mobile telephony in broadband. The potential of BWA technologies is evident from the fact that the auctions fetched the government over seven times the reserve price per block. tele.net recently organised a conference, “BWA in India”, to provide a platform to discuss the potential and challenges associated with these services. The following section on Technology: Focus on Wi-Max brings forward the views of Dr C.S. Rao, Chairman, Wimax Forum; Vivek Vasishtha, Director, Technical Policy and Standards, Corporate Affairs Group, Intel South Asia and Bharat Bhatia, Regional Director, Asia, Global Government Affairs, Motorola...
C.S. Rao, Chairman, WiMAX Forum India, and President, Reliance Communications
One of the major issues that will trigger the adoption of wireless broadband and drive the profitability of the industry is ARPUs. There is enough coverage of 2G networks with an installed base of over 400,000 towers. This can be quickly exploited by putting a small base station and making wireless broadband a reality, through operators that have BWA spectrum as well as access to towers and infrastructure.
Till now, 3G and EVDO were the only two major technologies available in the country. However now, with BWA spectrum being given in TDD mode, there are other alternative technologies available, like Wi-Max, LTE-TDD and LTE-FDD. Broadband requires a broad channel; without having a wider RF channel, the real broadband experience is not possible. The required broad channels are supported by Wi-Max and LTE-TDD in the 10 MHz and 20 MHz channels to enable a real broadband experience for the user.
For Wi-Max, the evolution has been from fixed Wi-Max to mobile Wi-Max and eventually to Wi-Max 2.0, which supports the 20 MHz channel as well. For wireless broadband to be provided using 3G, it has to be on HSPA+. While HSPA+ is supported on the infrastructure side, there are not many HSPA+ devices supporting MIMO. If these devices are available, broadband can be delivered on 3G HSPA+ at satisfactory quality of service levels.
Unfortunately, in India there is a spectrum crunch and so high speed broadband cannot be provided on a single carrier of 5+5 MHz that has been auctioned for 3G, even though the technology supports HSPA+. However, it is not adequate as the same carrier has to circuit switch voice and packet switch data.
On the device front, consumers prefer USB cards, which are already being used and are available in the Rs 1,600 to Rs 2,000 price range. These will continue to be used by consumers. The other device being used is the smartphone. With a 3.5 inch display, it provides a good visual experience. As we move ahead, there will be an evolution of embedded notebooks and tablets that come with the wide area network component or radio access component mostly embedded within.
Going forward, all consumers want to have LAN speeds available in the office at 100 Mbps and connectivity to be made available on the move. To be able to meet this demand, really broad channels – of 20 MHz or even more – and spectrum in multiples of 20 MHz need to be allocated. Dual-mode devices are likely to come into their own in the future. At least six or seven leading brands including Samsung and HTC are offering dual-mode devices with multiband support. Ubiquitous coverage is another future evolution. Solutions have to be adopted for Wi-Max to support in-building coverage through femto cells and distributed antenna systems.
Vivek Vasishtha, Director, Technical Policy and Standards, Corporate Affairs Group, Intel South Asia
The internet enables endless opportunities: e-commerce, tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance, entertainment, and employment generation. At a macro level, facilitating business on the internet contributes 2 per cent to the GDP of an area, far more than what a phone can do.
With the launch of 4G wireless broadband technologies (Wi-Max and LTE), mobile internet is set to take off. New devices are being added almost daily, thereby making services like the transmission of visual information possible. Currently, in the case of Wi-Max, over 300 devices are available and another 180 are under development. Mobile internet, with advantages like lower latencies and delivery of near-real-time applications like gaming and media services, represents a compelling proposition to the end-user. On the business front too, by enabling flexibility, responsiveness and productivity, BWA leads to increased employee productivity and availability.
The Mobile Wi-Max Release 1 version of the technology, which is based on MIMO smart antenna technology and has a simple flat-IP access network architecture, is now available. Certified products for the Release 2 version, which has advanced features including multicarrier, advanced multihop relay and interference mitigation, are likely to be available by late 2011.
Wi-Max offers increased capacity and a lower cost per bit to enable the delivery of mobile broadband services in both developed and developing market segments; therefore, it is the technology of choice for BWA in India.
For urban India, Wi-Max can be used to provide broadband services to the residential user via embedded laptops/netbooks/tablets, USBs/PC cards and indoor/ outdoor customer premises equipment. Wi-Max can also be used for providing mobile broadband via data and voice smartphones or netbooks/tablets. It can be used for enterprise connectivity in access and backhaul. The technology has an important role to play in the country’s rural regions where it can be used for basic phone services through very low-cost, single-mode VOIP terminals and for enabling low-cost internet access by means of low-cost embedded Wi-Max netbooks. In fact, today leading Indian operators, who have spent over $8 billion on acquiring BWA spectrum, are in the process of deciding on whether to go ahead with Wi-Max or to wait for a new competing technology.
Globally too, there is a strong momentum behind this technology with over 550 deployments in 147 countries. As of January 2010, mobile Wi-max accounted for deployments in 81 countries by 170 operators and the compound annual growth rate for mobile Wi-Max POPs (population) is estimated to be between 30 and 50 per cent through 2014. In terms of performance, the technology provides two to five times the speed of today’s 3G solutions, which is likely to be scaled up to ten times in the future. With a significant number of infrastructure vendors, and original equipment and device manufacturers supporting the technology, Wi-Max has developed a vibrant ecosystem over the past few years. Over 400 Wi-Max devices – which include multimode (Wi-Max, Wi-Fi, GSM, 3G) devices – provide support for different operator business models from fixed-only and nomadic to full mobility, etc.
Bharat Bhatia, Regional Director, Asia, Global Government Affairs, Motorola
India’s mobile services, characterised by the lowest mobile tariffs in the world, widening user demographics, higher minutes of usage compared to many countries, and falling SMS prices, have redefined the rules of the game. With over 750 million subscribers, mobile services in the country are clearly booming compared to the dismal performance of broadband. High broadband penetration rates correlate to higher productivity and access to information that has a direct relationship to the increased GDP of a country. A 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration is equivalent to 6.25 per cent of GDP in emerging markets. Therefore, broadband expansion is critical to sustain the over 10 per cent GDP growth in the country.
Operators and regulators around the world are in the process of transitioning from legacy GSM/CDMA networks to all-IP OFDMA broadband wireless networks. There is an opportunity for India to leapfrog in technology and innovation to 4G in order to reach out to all people. Globally, there has been a strong growth in Wi-Max and currently, there are over 600 Wi-Max deployments. Countries in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and CALA (Caribbean/Latin America) are moving aggressively towards deploying Wi-Max networks.
For instance, Redtone, an ISP operator in Malaysia, started offering Wi-Max services in two major cities in east Malaysia and is currently expanding to cover all major towns in the region. Similarly, Smart, a leading 2G/3G and wireless operator in the Philippines that started offering Wi-Max services in Manila, targeting residential and small and medium enterprises, is now aiming for countrywide coverage. In fact, Smart is set to build one of the most extensive Wi-Max networks in Southeast Asia for fixed wireless broadband applications. Meanwhile, Clear continues to be the poster child of Wi-Max in the US. The operator has expanded to about 30 markets in 13 months and covers nearly 16.5 million subscribers in 50 US and four international markets.
The demand for broadband is being driven by online media. This trend will only strengthen in the future, as 95 per cent of the total mobile traffic is likely to comprise data traffic by 2015. For instance, some Motorola 4G deployments are reporting a monthly average of about 15 GB per subscriber. However, even as mobile data traffic increases 10x by 2015, the revenue per MB will decline by 7x.
Next-generation data drivers are likely to be Web 2.0 and multimedia content. Even now, streaming video fills up the pipes with 75 per cent of the users watching online video. There are about 27 million mobile TV users in Japan and South Korea alone. Going forward, approximately 64 per cent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2013.
For broadband to be a success in India and given our virtually non-existent wireline networks, the country’s billion-plus population needs low-cost as well as spectrum-efficient mobile broadband. New spectrum is available in the 700 MHz band for broadband mobility and solutions. However, a quick decision on 700 MHz by the government is critical for equitable communications.