The last mile is the most troublesome. That’s where wires traditionally run from your telco’s nearest point of presence to your home. That’s also where lines get frayed, snapped and damaged resulting in intermittent connectivity. India’s right in the middle of a broadband rollout but so far the numbers have been paltry, a million-and-a-half.

Various solutions have been propounded to this problem including using short-range infrared lasers but what is perhaps more practicable is to use wireless technology. While we’ve already seen the deployment of fixed wireless phones that also offer dialup access, and cellular providers touting GPRS and EDGE, neither is sufficient for true personal broadband. The cellular providers in particular don’t seem to get the access model, they have prohibitive pricing driving away most users who desire mobile Internet access.

That’s where WiMAX comes in. We’ve been hearing about this technology for three to four years now. So what’s new? Just that Indian telcos are conducting trials using WiMAX and it looks like the knotty problem of the last mile is finally getting unravelled, er, unwired. From the equipment vendor standpoint, Intel and Motorola are bullish about the technology. Intel wants to make WiMAX as ubiquitous on notebooks as Wi-Fi is today.

Market researchers see a robust future for WiMAX in India. Maravedis and Tonse project an accumulated 18 million broadband wireless access subscribers by 2012, counting both residential and business segments and say that WiMAX subscribers should represent two-thirds of this figure.

Whether or not this comes to pass, one thing’s clear, we need an innovative mechanism to break free of the last mile gridlock or we can kiss broadband goodbye.