Amit Sharma: WiMaximum advantage

Telecommunications services are universally acknowledged for their role in the socio-economic transformation of a country. Studies show that a 2 per cent growth in teledensity is associated with a 3 per cent growth in economic development through significant growth of economic activities like eHealth, eGovernance and eEducation.

As a nation, we face a major challenge "" the bulk of our population is on the wrong side of the Digital Divide. Despite significant gains, telecom penetration is a meagre 2 per cent in rural India and data connectivity is practically non-existent. Internet connectivity, though growing, is still low. India has just about seven million Internet subscribers of whom only 1.3 million have access to broadband connections, way below the target of 20 million set for 2010.

Last mile access has been a major constraint in the growth of connectivity. BSNL and MTNL have an over-whelming majority of wire line connections and are stepping up efforts to provide DSL-based broadband to their customers. However, private telecom operators, who serve over 100 million consumers, have very limited wire line networks. The logistics and costs of digging up the ground and laying copper and fibre cables up to the destination has kept them from achieving their broadband rollout targets.

Fortunately, an alternative is available. India can avoid the unwieldy and challenging process of hardwiring its 3.2 million square kilometers "" the seventh largest area in the world "" by using next-generation broadband wireless technologies such as WiMAX. WiMax will allow India to make the leap from voice (2.5G) to voice/data/video/TV (4G), both cost-effectively and quickly.

WiMAX is a global, standards-based technology that can provide wireless broadband access to both urban and rural areas. Technology experts around the world say that going wireless is the best and only way forward for developing countries wanting to provide data services to the masses, given their limitations of infrastructure and time.

WiMax can also complement another trend in emerging markets "" mobile devices, and not personal computers, will drive the next wave of growth in connectivity. In India, we already have over 130 million mobile phones against less than 20 million PCs. This must be borne in mind, for it attests to consumer needs. PC usage is restricted to the educated elite and businesses. However, every electrician, carpenter and delivery boy is today comfortable with, indeed dependant on, a mobile phone to conduct his business. In the future, more consumers will access the net on their phones than on PCs; even more so, when WiMax makes high-speed data, video and TV possible on handheld devices.

The early gains of partial wireless connectivity in rural India can be seen in the stunning success of ITC's e-choupal project, which has empowered thousands of farmers in remote hamlets by enabling them to optimise price-discovery through access to updated information. WiMax could accelerate the pace of such connectivity thousand-fold, unleashing the potential and the power of the rural economy.

We need a true public-private partnership to make this happen, at least for our rural areas. The government needs to make spectrum available, particularly in the 2.5 GHz band, where global economies of scale will drive WiMax consumer premise equipment (CPE) to affordable levels. The government can use the USO fund, which has thousands of crores, collected as a cess from the telecom companies, to provide the seed funding to private operators/consortia to rollout out WiMax networks in a time-bound manner. With such a constructive public-private partnership, WiMax could become a truly powerful engine of socio-economic transformation.

The author is Country President, Motorola India.