Bsnl the government run telecom company is planning on spending $750 million to roll out wimax on a very large scale which will cover the whole of India and will benefit the rural areas in a big way. The conventional wired broadband is not doing any good to the rural India as most of it still remains unconnected, Its just the gprs connections which are available in those areas which are very slow speed as we all know.
Bsnl wimax is going to bring a new broadband race in India with the whole of India capable of connecting to the internet without having to worry about cables or telephone lines.
Wimax is proposed to be launched in India and a number of other nations very soon and is soon going to be available across the globe making it the most widely used communication technology. In India wimax deployment is delayed due to the government of India’s pending decision on allocation of spectrum for commercial wimax services. Majority of spectrum which is worldwide used for wimax is being held up by the defence forces in India which is creating further delay as the defence forces are not ready to give up their frequencies which are not even being used for any purpose at all.
Nokia has announced the launch of their first ever wimax enabled phone which is scheduled to be launched in India in January 2008. The option of installing external applications and programmes will give it ability to be used for programmes like skype and other voip applications hence bringing down the cost of mobile communication down substantially. I am hoping that the phone be priced very aggressively for it to be affordable in India.
Wimax connections in India are expected to touch the 21 million mark by 2014 as per forecasts and most operators are now expected their large scale wimax operations in 2008. Reliance wimax is already operational at a few places in India including Bangalore and Pune and is planning a large scale deployment in the next year. India looks all set to become one of the largest wimax markets in the world although Pakistan has left India far behind for the time being but by next year India will probably have the largest number of wimax connections in the world. I am all excited about wireless broadband being available in Delhi by next year and with that the freedom of being anywhere in Delhi and being able to do my work from my car even while traveling as it used to be a pain with gprs which takes ages to load a page.
Reliance data card : There are a lot of wireless internet options available in India now for instance airtel data card and hutch data cards which has now changed to vodafone data card and tata indicom and reliance are also offering wireless internet at very affordable rates but when compared to UK prices are still very high in India as one can get a wireless broadband connection using 3g technology at £10 per month from 3g and Vodafone and speeds are faster then 256kbps with the added advantage o being able to go anywhere within the UK.
I have got this reliance wireless data card and to be honest I don’t like it that much when I compare the speed with what I get in UK as some pages take ages to open leave alone establishing an ftp connection with my servers…
I normally have to do a lot of ftp work as I have a number of clients for whom I take care of their servers located in Germany and USA which obviously require me to have a good internet connection all the time although I have a team of guys working 24/7 but there are still some problems which they cannot take care of themselves and have to refer those problems to me. I am now looking at buying a teaming software and have at least three wireless connections one another laptop and use a LAN network on another laptop so that I would get access to the best network at all times but then this comes with its own set of problems for example if I am doing some work on a server I will be logged out every time my ip address changes.. I guess will wait for 3g 
for the time being reliance data card is doing the trick.
Just for info: Mahape has the most number of reliance data card subscribers.
I have a packard bell easy note laptop whch I bought in the end of 2003 and has been working very well. I have used this Packard bell laptop more then you could ever imagine.. On an average I must have used it atleast 5-6 hours a day and at times it has been running for day at a go so I guess the £1400 something I spent on it back then was well worth it and I am typing this post on my laptop sitting in the back of my new toyota innova doing 130km/hr on the gt road going towards Jallandhar from New delhi and connected to the WWW with this reliance data card. The only problem this laptop has ever had is a few days ago when the hard drive made a cracking noise so I backed up the whole hard drive and have bought a spare one just in case this one gives up on me so I will just have to open up two screws and put this new hard drive in and my laptop will be as good as new again.
I am actually looking to sell this laptop now but dont know how much to ask for it but if you are keen on owning this technology marvel which has travelled across the globe atleast twice and have been mostly used in UK, USA and Canada and doesnt have any scratches and doesnt have any dust inside either given the fact that its never been used in India before.
I will most probbably buy some cheap laptop this time so it wont be so painful to get rid of it every year and I will be able to buy a new one every year
Give me a shout if you are looking to buy a used laptop I have one for sale..
Its been almost a year since we have been hearing news about wimax being launched any day now and this and that but I still dont see this happening in the near futre. Wimax would make so many lives easier by letting us all stay connected on the move. Wimax is also being delayed by the gsm lobby which is prety strong here in India due to the fact that wimax phones will kill gsm alltogether by allowing everyone to call using wimax phones via voip and due to this gsm lobby is try their best to put more and more hurdles in the way of wimax as they will loose billions of dollars which they have invested over the years all across India.
Bsnl is going to launch thier first ever cdma services in Calcutta next month.Earlier bsnl only had WLL services but now cdma technology will be used in calcutta and will provide high speed internet access to any one who subscribes for it.BSNL is also doing trials of the new wimax technology at ten locations across the nation which are said to have been very succesful.BSNL is all set to launch thier wimax internet services across the nation but is waiting for the government to decide on the allocation of spectrum for wimax operations.
 VSNL has announced that they will be offering roaming facility to thier customers and they will now be able to use hotspots at twenty five countries without having to buy any credits abroad.India now has only about 1000 hot spots and wifi deployment is in its infant stage but things are picking up.vsnl is now a member of Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) which is a global consortium of leading wireless internet service operators of the world.VSNL wifi customers will now be able to stay online at hotspots at US, UK and Italy among number of other countries.
VSNL’s broadband will now be a seperate company as they are planning to seperate thier other communication business from broadband and make it a seperate entity.
        I have been a fan of wimax technology ever since I found out about it about a year ago and have always been looking farward to get a wimax connection.I have been in India for the last six months and the only reason I some times miss UK is the 10mbps cable internet connection I have there, Now that I have hopes of soon getting a wimax connection here in Newdelhi which hopefully will be more then atleast 2mbps or may be upto 75mbps as some companies plan.
Bsnl has been running wimax trials across the country at ten different locations which they say have been very succesful and plan to roll out commercial wimax connections some time later this year with prices at par with thier adsl offerings.
For NewDelhi wimax would be an ideal solution as 80% of Delhi is so unorganised that no other mode of internet connectivity can beat the ease of wimax which doesnt need any wires.The population density also makes it more lucrative for wimax deployment as very few towers will be able to cover the whole of Delhi and the cost of infrastructure per connection will go down considerably which will hopefully be passed on to the consumer.
In the next article I will write about details of wimax technology and how it works including details about the equipment used to deliver and recieve data.
I am eagerly waiting for wimax, are you? If you have any comments please feel free to share with all of us.
Nokia has announced that they will launch thier first ever wimax enabled mobile phone in India in January next year.Wimax is a very destructive technology in my opinion and a lot of things will vanish once wimax comes into use in India and the first thing to go for good will be the notorious Sify cable operator as those people who are stuck with sify due to non availibility of any other isp in thier area will be able to get wimax connection as soon as it is launched and will say goodbye to sify for ever due to thier extremely poor service topped with a very bad attitude from the cable operators who keep on passing the blame to sify and sify blames everything on the cable operator.