Indians have many hopes from the emerging 3G and WiMAX scenario that promise high speed mobile broadband services. How successful will it be and what will the scene of mobile broadband in India in 2011?
If figures are any indication, then a report by leading global IT research and advisory firm Gartner says that by the end of 2011 India will have 6.9 Million mobile and fixed WiMAX connections. The flipside is that this report also points out that due to low PC penetration in India there will be a limited demand for WiMAX. This will make WiMAX a niche technology limited to enterprise and high-end residential users in urban India.
This fact is further strengthened by the fact that in January 2008 India had only 3.4 million broadband subscribers as against the 9 million targeted by 2007 by the broadband policy.
The high hopes of Indian masses is based on the way the Indian government is strongly promoting WiMAX as a technology to connect the country with broadband services. Although, if we look at the mobile broadband framework of our country, we can easily see that a nationwide rollout of WiMAX is not a near possibility due to the costs involved. This has acted as a demotivator for operators from rolling out country-wide mobile broadband.
By 2011, the Government can work through bringing WiMAX broadband to rural centres in villages including schools and hospitals. From these access points, individual access can then be made available via a Wi-Fi mesh. This will help achieve higher degree of rural penetration as envisioned by our government. Where urban areas are concerned, WiMAX will offer mobile and semi-mobile broadband to consumers.
3G or WiMAX
The future mobile broadband access market share between 3G and WiMAX will greatly depend on the timeline and bandwidth of 3G and WiMAX licenses. The mobile broadband scene in 2011 will greatly depend on spectrum allocation, ecosystem, and the timeliness of WiMAX and 3G licenses.
On comparison, though, 3G has an upper hand than WiMAX in terms of mobile broadband services. 3G will offer higher processing speeds and make it possible for consumers to use new kinds of value-added services. Adding new dimensions to mobile broadband, 3G will offer everything from mobile banking, micro finance to services providing useful information to farmers and safety information to fishermen. 3G will also enhance the mobile broadband experience of a business laptop user by enabling roaming across heterogeneous networks through single integrated USB/integrated modems.
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