Mobility

May 25, 2006
WiMAX critical for the Indian market

NEW DELHI -- Based in California’s Silicon Valley, Aperto Networks develops and delivers the world’s most advanced WiMAX broadband wireless products for service providers. Aperto serves over 200 carrier customers in 65 countries, and has an installed base of hundreds of thousands of units worldwide.

Aperto’s wide range of base stations, subscriber units, and related equipment enables carriers to offer profitable broadband wireless services in diverse markets via IP-rich, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint networks that are easy to deploy and grow. Aperto’s carrier-class WiMAX and pre-WiMAX solutions provide industry-leading subscriber density, quality of service, manageability, and reliability.

Demonstrating a strong commitment to industry standards, Aperto is a founding board member of the WiMAX Forum, and chair of the Forum’s service provider working group. The company is also a founder and lead contributor to the IEEE 802.16-2004 and ETSI-BRAN industry standards, and is currently playing a key role in the evolution of the IEEE 802.16-2005 standard.

Convergence Plus spoke to Manish Gupta, vice president of marketing and alliances, Aperto Networks, at the recently concluded 14th Convergence India 2006 exhibition. Excerpts from the interview.

Convergence Plus: What makes you leader in the most challenging segment of the WiMAX equipment market?

Manish Gupta: Aperto Networks contributed significantly to the development of broadband wireless standards organisations such as IEEE 802.16 and ETS BRAN. In addition, we based the development of our products on these standards from our formation. This has put us in the strongest position to be the leading supplier of WiMAX equipment.

CP: Can WiMAX accommodate broadband, as the plans for rural networks are likely to be based on wireless connectivity? What equipment do you have in this regard?

MG: Yes, WiMAX has the flexibility to support products that scale from rural networks covering areas without broadband access all the way to densely populated cities. For rural networks, you can use low-priced single sector base stations that in the near term will be at price parity with outdoor Wi-Fi equipment due to the economies of scale.

CP: How do you visualise future of WiMAX in India with special reference to applications?

MG: The key thing is that WiMAX was built from ground up to support multiple services. For the Indian market, this is critical because it can be used to support voice, data and even streaming video without rolling out a different infrastructure. Right now there are discussions of rolling out WiMAX-enabled information kiosks so that different areas in rural areas do not need PCs or other equipment to access information.

CP: What about the cost factor in deploying WiMAX as compared to other wireless and wireline technologies especially as it is considered quite expensive?

MG: If you look at the price for WiMAX wireless equipment, the price for subscribers started at or near the starting prices for equivalent wireline or other wireless products. For example, DSL modems and Wi-Fi products used to cost nearly US $1000 per CPE. WiMAX equipment will experience the same kind of drastic cost reduction as we move forward.

CP: Would you suggest WiMAX deployment in all public places to facilitate wireless connectivity from anywhere? If so, what would be the cost\benefit ratio for this?

MG: WiMAX could be used for this kind of deployment. However, the key thing is to review the overall business model. I think in some places, municipalities have under estimated the cost of rolling out free wireless Internet access and are looking at alternative models.

CP: Would you claim that this technology is appropriate even for very large networks? Can it handle large subscriber bases? If so, what equipment is needed?

MG: Yes, WiMAX can scale up to support large networks using multiple multi-sector base stations in a given area. You need to have carrier-class products that are designed for high levels of frequency re-use. A number of leading vendors are developing products that can easily support hundreds of users per base station.