“We would look at voice,” said Prakash Bajpai, chief executive of Tikona. He said many technologies would aid it, and they were easily available. “There are multiple ways to look at providing voice with data,” he said. Voice services can be provided in ways beyond the traditional 2G voice on a mobile handset over the internet.
Tikona is a data services-only company which provides broadband using Wi-fi utilising free spectrum. They had evolved an in-house technology to use the free spectrum and provide high-speed internet services. In 2010, they bought wimax spectrum in five circles-- Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and Rajasthan. The company claimed earlier that these circles were some of the most populous and, hence, offered the greatest potential in terms of internet usage.
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The government recently said that companies which already have wimax spectrum ie 4G spectrum, can extend themselves to voice services if they pay an extra amount of Rs 1,650 crore.
“The amount specified by the government is for an all-India licence. For the five circles that we have, it would only cost Rs 200 crore. Each operator would look at the opportunity based on the circles that have spectrum in,” said Bajpai.
Apart from Reliance Industries which has a pan-India licences for wimax spectrum, ability to bundle licence will help other players as well. Data services offered by many telecom players using 3G spectrum have not found many takers, as yet. Industry experts say that providing voice, which is much more popular is very important to offer a bundled service.
“At least from the regulatory side, we will have no restriction to use voice application. This is a positive move. It is just a recommendation as of now, we will wait for the announcement,” said Bajpai. The company is expected to launch 4G services using their wimax spectrum this year. “The timing depends on the possession of technology from vendors,” said Bajpai.
Bharti Airtel is the first and the only player until now, to have launched 4G services in Kolkata and Bangalore last year. Like RIL, Tikona is also expected to launch service via the pioneering technology of Long Term Evolution (LTE) to offer services via wimax. Tikona also intends to converge its current broadband services via WI-FI and merge them with 4G. With an assured speed, it will by pass traffic from its wifi service to 4G service, depending on the movement of the consumer. While indoors, the traffic would be shifted to WI-FI and if the consumer moves out of either his home or office, it would be shifted to 4G service.