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.
(Aparajita Gupta can be contacted at [email protected])
