Alcatel-Lucent is in talks to provide equipment for both 4G platforms in India, and is negotiating with "most of the people who have won the spectrum" in 2.3GHz, recently awarded in India's broadband wireless auction.
Reports from Reuters and India's Economic Times quote Munish Seth - Alcatel-Lucent's new country head for India - indicating the potential customers include Reliance Communications. The operator was the only privately-held firm to win 2.3GHz spectrum on a national basis, via its acquisition of ISP Infotel.
He also mentioned another ISP, Tikona Digital Networks, which has licenses in several telecom circles or operating regions.
The negotiations could lead to orders in early 2011, the reports indicate, though this will depend on the Indian authorities clarifying rules on security checks for telecoms suppliers, which have been holding up deals for 2G expansion, 3G and BWA.
The big debate in India has been whether the 2.3GHz TDD spectrum would be built out with Wimax, as expected until earlier this year when Qualcomm decided to bid for licenses, in order to promote the newer TDD alternative, TD-LTE.
Qualcomm won spectrum in several circles. While the state-owned telcos, BSNL and MTNL, which had early access to BWA frequencies, are already rolling out Wimax, other players have been less clear about their choices.
Reliance talked about LTE when it first acquired Infotel but is now trialing Wimax and looks almost certain to use that standard at least for its first phase of deployment.