India’s government has finalised the plans for its 3G and WiMAX auctions – with the 3G auctions starting on January 16th next year. Auctions for WiMAX licenses will commence two days after the 3G licenses are sold. Acording to a memorandum from the Department of Telecoms, there will be a pre-bid conference next week, with the final submissions to enter the auction being due on the 5th January. The licenses are all valid for 15 years. But there have been concerns about lack of 3G spectrum in some parts of the country. Delhi will be limited to just two private companies operating 3G networks – while Mumbai could have up to four private operators (in addition to the state operators). As for the WiMAX licenses – there is sufficient spectrum in the 2.3Ghz and 2.5Ghz bands to allow for three private operators in each of the country’s circles – in addition to the two state owned operators who have also been granted WiMAX licenses. Read more.
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Renowned Bangladeshi Telecom expert and LIRNEasia Senior Policy Fellow Abu Saeed Khan passes away
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Amitabh Kumar
Hongkong 2.5/ 2.3 Auctions -a wake up call for WiMAX auctions in India
WiMAX despite over 400 networks successfully rolled out is presently being buffeted by strong winds of a pessimism. Sample this- in the 2.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz auctions which were held in Hongkong in Jan 2009 by the OFTA the only bids which came in were for the 2.5 Ghz-2.6 GHz band. There were no bidders for the 2.3 GHz band which is a prime band for mobile WiMAX with WiMAX forum certified products being available. Not only that, the only successful bids in the 2.5-2.6 GHz band the bidders were mobile companies ( China Mobile HK, CSL and Genius Brand) and have not hidden their intention to use the potential spectrum for LTE. This is despite the fact that LTE, a technology evolution path of 3GPP is still at least 2-3 years away.
As India enters the auctions of 3G and WiMAX portions of spectrum later in march / April 2009, the results of auctions should be a wake up call. We have been pointing out repeatedly that while the air interfaces can be used for WiMAX, the companies are planning to use the LTE based technologies.
With the Indian govt and regulators having adopting an Ostrich like attitude believing that the WiMAX spectrum in the 2.3 and 2.5 Ghz bands would be used for growth of broadband wireless in the country, the reality will bite when the auctions are over with a probable repeat of the Hongkong results. The reserve prices of WiMAX spectrum fixed at 50% of 3G prices ( at appox $800 million for 3G and $400 million for WiMAX) making it well out of reach of broadband wireless operators. The only users which could possibly use this new spectrum in the 2.5 GHz bands are likely to be those using 3G-LTE technology. This is owing to the sever spectrum crunch for 2G services and the need to deploy additional spectrum for voice services by a multiplicity of players which makes any possible additional capacity attractive.
hence the policy makers should be under no illusion that just because they are auctioning certain spectrum as WiMAX, it will be used for anything other than LTE. But perhaps they are indeed aware of it. After all the 2.5 GHz band has been vacated by throwing to the wolves the existing WiMAX operators operating in this very band.