Comments on: BSNL's Big $750 MM WiMAX Network Plan

By: srinivas

srinivas — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:16:28 +0000

Even BSNL dept people doesnot know about the Wimax broadband. Please make them educated about the facilities (Plans, coverage, availability) available at BSNL.

By: Anurag Pandya

Anurag Pandya — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:24:59 +0000

Country like India needs WIMAX, more then anything else in this world, its a very good fit Technology for a Country like India, where we have the varity of Geo. locations and reaching with Copper to each and all houses and places is not very fisiable thing and that too very costly. WIMAX is a answer to all the Networks related needs and its works very well. Welcomw WIMAX to India in all the ways and since its cheaper to all i.e from operators to end users, WIMAX is a perfect Solutions for our Country.

By: More Speed Bumps Ahead for WiMAX - GigaOM

More Speed Bumps Ahead for WiMAX - GigaOM — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:01:21 +0000

[...] nobody is doubting that WiMAX is real and happening all over the globe — especially in developing economies that don’t have our copper legacy — it [...]

By: Aditya

Aditya — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:34:04 +0000

Om,

Just a QA thing as you are rolling out a new Gigaom. The text is spilling out when one uses firefox to view comments. An example in point is the comments left on this article by Dave Burstein.

By: Uday

Uday — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:14:54 +0000

I tried with Reliance WiMax connection here in Bangalore and they have hell lot of issues to sort. It's a crappy connection with lot of issues like connections getting lost due to bad weather etc..

Also I got a call the other day from BSNL asking whether I want to try their new BSNL WiMax connection for which I said "NO" seeing the crappy Reliance service. I will just wait some more time until the service becomes more reliable.

By: bunty

bunty — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:25:07 +0000

Trying out Reliance WiMax in Bombay. Pretty crappy. Up link is just 64kbps or so, uploading an email completely blocks out even the download.

By: Manoj

Manoj — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:16:38 +0000

BSNL support leaves much to be desired but their ADSL service is rock stable. Over 2 years, i have needed support just on a couple of occasions. If their Wimax is as stable, i will be queueing up for it.

By: Manoj

Manoj — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:06:33 +0000

Om, I somehow disagree with your claims of "the target of choice four-letter words" for BSNL. Yes it used to be, few years back, but now it has improved a lot and some of their services are always better than rest of the private providers (best example is the DataOne). As somebody pointed out, its MTNL in Delhi, but not sure how it differs in strategy and management of networks.

By: Samir Raiyani

Samir Raiyani — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:52:51 +0000

It's easier to blow hot air about wireless. :)

By: Libran Lover

Libran Lover — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:50:51 +0000

How about BSNL do something to provide good support to existing broadband customers? You wouldn't be using four-letter words if your BSNL broadband service was down and you had to go through weeks (or even months) without any resolution, despite your attempt to contact them several times on the phone AND in person. You would just be taking a gun to them!

By: rohit

rohit — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:33:31 +0000

BSNL (despite its govt ownership) has a cadre of dedicated, hard working engineers (I know it sounds weird) - i have had the chance to observe their roll-out of ADSL in an nth-tier market (Kurukshetra, Haryana) and the service has been running with less than 3-5 days downtime in the past 2+ years.

I also realize today's technology is easy to 'roll-out' vs. the copper infrastructure and strowger switching used to be. Computing massively eases the manual workload and automates many error-prone steps. Witness the 250million subs for mobile phones in India over the past 12 years. Except for the overloading that is frequent and calldrop rates that may be the highest in the world, the infrastructure actually runs pretty well - from e-billing to 'provisioning' a new connection in minutes (once the 'photostat' stack 'o documents and IDs are checked).

Combine these two and you get better than average chances of wi-max's success in India...

rohit

By: Dev

Dev — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 18:14:32 +0000

The IEEE 802.16e standardized technology or rather WiMAX deployment in india has been in news way too often now. First with the RF spectrum then with the number of private players permitted and then it was the ISP Association crying foul that DOT permitted only Mobile operators for bidding for the spectrum.

The spectrum had always remained an issue right from the onset but guess they've finally decided to settle with 2.5 GHz to 2.7 GHz as opposed to the initial plans for 3.3-3.4 GHz and 3.4-3.6 Ghz since the said frequency was being used by satellite broadcasters.

Its also worth mentioning that Intel plans to introduce WiMax compatible chipsets for laptops by the first quarter in the coming year and that Beceem Communications is already producing WiMax compatible mobiles and that some bigger players like Bharti Airtel are gearing up with Moto's Wi4 end-to-end Networking solution for roll out across all states.

Besides BSNL states in its official release that it would be connecting to 25,000 schools in over 40,000 villages and would also connect 50,000 Kiosks in the first phase and by 2009 would be offering 100 MBPs connectivity. Watch out Korea!

By: Arun

Arun — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:45:20 +0000

Just so you know Om, MTNL runs the phone network in Delhi. Not BSNL.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:09:38 +0000

BSNL’s Big $750 MM WiMAX Network Plan

Indian incumbent BSNL plans to spend about $750 million on a nationwide WiMAX network that will primarily target rural areas and small towns and cover a sixth of the country’s ever-growing population. This has to be one of the largest WiMAX rollouts ...

By: Vinod

Vinod — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:47:27 +0000

I was an (unfortunate) early adopter of the Reliance WiMAX in Bangalore, India. Hopefully Reliance will get to learn how to really 'role out' a service at this scale. :)

By: Dave Burstein

Dave Burstein — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:36:58 +0000

Om "it is easier and faster to rollout wireless infrastructure" is right on target. There are only 40M phone lines for a billion people, so you can't reach most of the population that way. Instead they are adding incredible numbers of mobile phones, 60M or more this year.

So wireless is it. The only thing holding back Wimax has been the cost of the receivers, which is finally coming down. That's why the total number of Wimax connections is low, but likely to grow fast.

The interesting question is whether WiMax or traditional mobile data wins. CDMA can deliver just about the same performance as WiMax, despite all the WiMax hype. Bharti and others have been beating BSNL, so they may have an edge in the new highspeed wireless data market.

Very interesting they are funding this out of universal service money. That may bring BSNL back into the game. BSNL is government owned, and the current government has many leftists (even Communists) who back the unions and state control. So it's no surprise the government is tipping towards BSNL, trying to reverse the decline.