These include utility bill payments, issue of official documents like land or vehicle registrations or birth certificates, state e-government processes and inter-village communications. It also aims to harness video to support telemedicine and remote education. Broadband tariffs will be very low, starting at INR140 ($3) a month.
In the first phase, BSNL is covering 1,000 rural districts, 32 in Rajasthan, which will involve 11,500 Common Service Centers. Phase two will take the system across the nation, covering 50,000 CSCs. As well as government support, BSNL is drawing on financial and technical backing from other partners within the Wimax community, notably Intel, which is providing chip technology for devices that will enable affordable services and accelerate uptake.
Another Asian market with huge population and low broadband penetration (under 1%), is Indonesia. The Wimax Forum has its sights set on making its technology the key to rapid internet growth. The body has launched its Indonesian chapter to get close to the government's goal of connecting 100m users to broadband by 2015.
The new chapter will promote Wimax to government officials, regulators, operators and customers, in the wake of recent 2.3GHz spectrum auctions (there is already 3.3GHz spectrum allocated for Wimax).
The Wimax Forum Indonesia (WFID) chapter's membership represents global players, and local ones - notably Mastel and Indonesia Wireless Broadband (ID-WiBB). The signing of an MoU between the Forum and Mastel, the country's non-profit telecoms organization, in September sparked off the new activities.
Over with the newer 4G technology, LTE, the early interest has been firmly focused on mature mobile markets, especially Europe. Huawei has added yet another trial to its growing list in the region, carrying out a live test with Telefonica O2 UK.
The companies achieved a peak downlink of 150Mbps in a trial in the Slough area west of London, as part of the broader six-country LTE tests being conducted by Telefonica, with most of the active vendors, across Europe and Latin America.
In Stockholm, Huawei has an early deployment with TeliaSonera, but the operator has gone live in the downtown area of the Swedish capital with its other - and more established - vendor, Ericsson. TeliaSonera customers are being issued with Samsung LTE dongles to test the network. Kenneth Karlberg, president and head of mobility services at Telia, said: “Thanks to the successful cooperation with Ericsson we can offer 4G to our customers in Stockholm earlier than originally planned.”
[Source: Rethink Wireless]