Telsima plans $25 mn for WiMAX service

WiMAX technology provider Telsima Corporation is eyeing India as a potentially huge market for its products. The company, with its head office in Santa Clara in the US, is planning to pump in $20-25 million into the Indian market to roll out WiMAX services.

"We will look to strengthen e-governance in the country. We see immense potential for broadband. Our focus will also be on the rural segment, as we see immense potential there," said Protip Ghose, vice-president, sales and marketing, Telsima.

The company, which is backed by leading Silicon Valley investors, such as New Path Ventures, CMEA Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Intel Capital and Jafco Asia, has started manufacturing subscriber stations, a customer precise equipment essential for WiMAX, in Bangalore. It has a software development centre in Bangalore and a sales, marketing and customer support centre in Gurgaon.

The company also announced that base stations and subscriber station have passed the WiMAX compliance and interoperability testing and are officially WiMAX Forum-certified products.

"We will receive initial funding for our India plans from our investors. Part of the $20-25 million we plan to raise will be used to strengthen our Bangalore development centre. We aim to place ourselves in a leadership position in relation to wireless broadband in the country," says Sangeeta Iyer, the company's corporate communications head.

Telsima has already started WiMAX trials with telecom operators. "We cannot yet mention the names of the operators. However, we can confirm that we will roll out commercial services by December this year or January next year," said Ghose.

However, Ghose admitted that the ongoing 3G spectrum allocation imbroglio could delay the complete rollout of WiMAX. "WiMAX operates in a different spectrum. Since the 3G spectrum allocation issue itself has not yet been sorted out, WiMAX could get delayed further," he added.

Telsima Corporation is a leading developer of WiMAX Forum-certified broadband wireless access (BWA) products and services, enabling mobile, multimedia 4G wireless networks.

It's products include patent-pending wireless and networking technologies that enable operators to deploy multimedia broadband wireless services in dense urban, suburban and rural environments in a cost-effective manner. Telsima has been a principal member of the WiMAX Forum since September 2004.