An Interview with Protip Ghose, Vice President Sales & Marketing, Telsima

What are the market prospects for WiMAX in India?

WiMAX is a great standardized bridging solution between the last mile and the WAN. It can be used for a number of applications, including “last mile” broadband connections, hotspot and high-speed enterprise connectivity for businesses. The WiMAX Forum has focused its members’ efforts around implementing the IEEE 802.16 standards in order to drive interoperability, reliability, and economies of scale. These in turn lower the cost of technologies in the marketplace. We see this as a great opportunity for price-conscious India. WiMAX also has the greatest potential in bridging the “Digital Divide” between urban and rural India in the most cost effective manner.

hich entities are driving WiMAX growth in India? How do you see this growth in future driven by many other players?

Due to the lack of sufficient copper lines, all the telecom players, as well as the Government and Regulators are now focusing on wireless broadband connectivity. Earlier wireless broadband technologies were all proprietary, hence the cost points were not in line with what the market could pay. Now, with standardization coming in through WiMAX, it is expected that interoperability would drive the cost points far lower. With WiMAX forum specified standardization, testing, trials and certifications in place, several companies are making WiMAX products available by late 2006, facilitating strong growth in 2007.

How big is the opportunity for WiMAX in India. How do you propose to leverage your technical strengths to address this opportunity?

Opportunities for Telsima in this scenario

Currently, there are just around 2 million broadband subscribers in India. We expect it to grow to 20 million by 2010, of which 10 million will be wireless subscribers. If the capital expenditure per subscriber is estimated to be approximately USD 300, there is a wireless market of USD 3 billion waiting to be created and serviced. We are readying to take it on.

Our products and their positioning in the WiMAX technology chain.

Telsima’s product portfolio consists of WiMAX Forum Certified Base Station and Subscriber Stations supported by market leading provisioning and network management software. These WiMAX products offer comprehensive end-to-end solutions that enable both fixed and mobile media rich networks. Currently, Telsima products support 802.16-2004 standards. By early Q2 2007, Telsima will also have solutions supporting the 802.16-2005 standards, suitable for wave 1 certification. This will be followed by solutions supporting the Wave 2 certifications. Telsima also offers complete network implementation services to complement its WiMAX products including RF simulation, capacity and coverage analysis, network architecture design, and deployment.

 

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