South Korea's conglomerate Samsung is in talks with Indian mobile operators to tap the multi- billion dollar opportunity presented by the vast requirement for infrastructure in the country for rolling out Wimax services that offers data downloads twice as fast as 3G.
The company has already deployed Wimax infrastructure for 25 operators in 15 countries such as Japan, US and Russia. "The company is in discussion with the operators for deploying the network infrastructure as we have global experience and are looking at leveraging that to the Indian market," Samsung Corporate Vice President (Networks Business) I D Hwang said.
WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a wireless technology that enables faster data-transfer over a wider area than Wi-Fi.
Talking about the opportunities in India, Samsung Corporate Vice President (Networks Business - Marketing) Hung Song said, "Last year, about $720 million was contributed to our revenues by Wimax and it is expected to double this year without India in the picture. If India gets added, business will grow manifold."
According to analysts, after the Wimax services rollout, India would have about 5 lakh subscribers. This is expected to grow to 50 million by 2015, driven by the huge demand for data services like e-mail and social networking.
A recent study by McKinsey projected that a country's GDP improves by 0.6 per cent for every 10 per cent increase in penetration of broadband.
"Studies globally have proved that higher broadband penetration has helped the economies move up. Broadband will create new segments of industry and jobs in the country and a majority of the new subscribers would come through wireless technologies," Hwang said.
The auction of spectrum for mobile broadband is slated later this month and the government has received applications from 11 companies, including Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Aircel.
The government has kept the reserve price at Rs 1,750 crore (Rs 17.5 billion) for pan-India spectrum. Two blocks of 2.3 MHz spectrum in each circle will be put up for the auction.
Asked if the fourth generation of mobile technology Wimax would be successful in India, Hwang said, "A lot would depend on the timely deployment and the pricing and marketing strategy adopted by the players."
"The prices should be at par with the current broadband offers, otherwise the acceptance might be low for Wimax," he added.
