At a time when the country is launching
another round of spectrum auctions in February and telecom operators are vying
for allocations, global telecom infrastructure provider UTStarcom is confident
that India's top 20 cities will be fully Wi-Fi enabled by the end of 2015.
"Wi-Fi will compliment data
offload applications, which is something that all operators are implementing
worldwide. India also has started (on this). By the end of 2015, Wi-Fi will be
a reality in India. It will be there in top 20 cities in India, full
coverage," Rahul Pandey, director - sales (SAARC Countries) at UTStarcom,
told IANS.
Wi-Fi
is the popular term for a high-frequency wireless local area network
technology.
UTStarcom, with its operation
headquarters in Hong Kong, recorded a $160 million turnover in 2013, with India
being the second highest market after Japan. The company has been present in
India since 2000 and has worked extensively with private and public players in
deploying telecom infrastructure.
"After 2G, everyone (operators)
came to 3G and paid for spectrum. There will be a stage they will be running
out of spectrum to expand. So, that is the time, typically, when Wi-Fi comes
in," UTStarcom chief executive officer William Wong told IANS.
"When Wi-Fi comes in, the cost of
carrying data will be around one-tenth. If they want to offload the traffic on
3G or 4G and move it to Wi-Fi, the operating expenses will be dramatically
reduced. That's what exactly we see in Japan," he added.
The company is working with a host of
operators and they are bullish and determined on Wi-Fi connectivity. "They
will be doing in phased manner. Some of them have started in trail phase,"
Pandey said, declining to name the operators.
The company met Telecom Secretary
Rakesh Garg in September 2014. Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar
Prasad went to Japan after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit. Prasad
inspected the UTStarcom deployment there.
"We have deployed more than
500,000 hotspots (Wi-Fi area), which means 1.5 million access points. The
telecom secretary showed interest to replicate it in India," Pandey said.
The Indian government is extremely keen
on speedy rollout of Wi-Fi services in the country.
"No policy problems. We have met
all the telecom operators and they are finalising their budgets for Wi-Fi. The
company is ready for deployment. We have expertise available. So it's not a
challenge for us," Pandey added.
The company is focussing on the
government's National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) that will help it to deploy Wi-Fi
in rural areas. NOFN is set to link 600 million rural citizens of India across
250,000 gram panchayats spread over 6,600 blocks and 631 districts through a
broadband optical fibre network.
"We talk about affordable
connectivity. By affordable connectivity, we are looking at things like what
the country is already doing in 4G deployment. There is lack of spectrum. One
of the quickest ways to reach high percentage of deployment would be the
adoption of Wi-Fi," Wong said.
"We did half a million in Japan in
half a year. With NOFN on schedule, we could be coupling hand in hand with NOFN
deployment. The minute NOFN deployment is done we can connect places with
Wi-Fi," he added.
Wong said UTStarcom's platform supports
a very dense number of hotspots. One controller can manage up to 120,000
hotspots.
"Now we are looking at the
government for acceleration in deployment in both public and private sectors.
The Modi government is active in connecting not just the Metros but also rural
areas. So, I believe they are taking the right steps. So India can catch up on
the global stage," Shalin Shah, general manager, India operations,
UTStarcom, told IANS.
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