Telecom Lead India: Airtel is set to roll out TD-LTE
based 4th generation mobile broadband services in Kolkata and will be followed
by other license holders to roll out 4G services based on TD-LTE. Will WiMAX
retain its lost glory?
Two years ago, LTE was nowhere in the long term plans of
India in its voyage for 4G. Although there were many assumptions on its entry,
4G was always WiMAX for India, until equipment vendor Qualcomm entered into the
BWA spectrum battle for TD-LTE.
At that time, Ericsson CTO Haken Ericsson also said,
“it is commonly known in the industry that WiMAX requires minimum 30 MHz
of spectrum, whereas India is offering only 20 MHz and this may result in
severe interference problems.”
WiMAX requires a three cell frequency reuse. In order to
operate a WiMAX system with a 10 MHz carrier needs three-times 10 MHz to operate
in, therefore the minimum spectrum requirement to be able to operate standard
WiMAX without severe interference problems is 30 MHz. On the other hand, TD-LTE
has a re-use frequency of one, hence, it can be used in adjacent cells without
any severe interference.
The problem with WiMax was the time it took to go
mobile. The WiMax IEEE 802.16e (fixed WiMax) standard has been around for years
now, but the mobile option (16m) is much more recent. And operators
recognized that mobile connectivity was the future, not a fixed wireless
option, and hence opted for LTE,” said Nicholas James of UK Broadband.
LTE allows us to do it at a much lower cost than say a WiMax
network
LTE allows us to do it at a much lower cost than say a
WiMax network. The home LTE device has built in Wi-Fi, and a computer can plug
directly into it via an Ethernet connection. In the future, we will also offer
some telephony as well, but not from day one,” James added.
Not only in India, but globally, LTE is being adopted by
the telecom operators. In the U.S, recently Sprint announced that they wouldn’t
produce WiMAX handsets beyond the end of 2012.
Sprint will be using the G-block of their 1900 MHz
spectrum slice to roll out LTE. Their Network Vision program is installing
a multimodal infrastructure that includes the LTE. Sprint plans on activating
their CDMA-LTE network in the next few months. A total of 15 LTE different
devices will be produced throughout the year.
Back in 2010, Sprint launched its first WiMax phone, the
HTC Evo 4G, which went on to gain huge popularity thanks to good network speeds
and Sprint’s unlimited data plans. AT&T and Verizon were a little late
to the game with rolling out their 4G LTE networks, but they quickly caught up
to Sprint.
WiMAX is a success in Pakistan. But India is a different
market. Can the technology come back and revive its presence.
Google to sell 6.5 percent stake in WiMAX provider Clearwire
Google announced to sell its 6.5 percent stake in WiMAX
provider Clearwire at a loss of around $453 million.
Danish Khan
editor@telecomlead.com