BSNL Wireless Broadband (Wi-Max) Services may be delayed ?
Posted at December 6th, 2008 under BSNL Dataone, Broadband | No Comments »
WiMAX or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access provides for wireless transmission of data and up to 75 Mb/sec speed. The 802.16d — also frequently referred to as “fixed WiMAX” has no support for mobility. On the other hand, 802.16e has support for mobility and is hence also known as ‘mobile WiMAX’.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (Bsnl) has not yet opened the tenders invited from franchisees for launching mobile Wimax (802.16 e version). The bids were scheduled for 4 December. Reasons for the delay were not promulgated.
Possibly, it was because
- Of the 28 bidders, many small players do not match the Rs 1,000 cr turnover criterion
- They also do not have the required number of base stations and wireless broadband subscribers
Hence a Chase forcconsortium partner! A turn over criteria of Rs. 1000 crore was expected. A source close to the development alleged that many small players who do not meet the turnover criteria are offering to partner with the bigger players to form a consortium since the BSNL criteria does allow for this. In return, says the source, “two, three small players have been asking for a substantial sum of money, especially from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and IT services players to form such consortiums”.BSNL plans to provide the 20MHz spectrum it got from DOT earlier, to bidders in 16 circles to provide wireless broadband services to its customers, based on WiMAX e version (mobile) in the 2.5GHz frequency band.
BSNL plans to provide the 20MHz spectrum it got from DOT earlier, to bidders in 16 circles to provide wireless broadband services to its customers, based on WiMAX e version (mobile) in the 2.5GHz frequency band. Towards this end, it had invited expressions of interest (EOIs) of bids from companies that have a minimum turnover of Rs 1,000 crore (for Metro and A circles) and Rs 750 crore and Rs 500 crore for the B and C circles respectively.
The bids were invited on a non-exclusive, revenue-sharing and license service area (LSA) basis. Bidders could bid for any number of LSAs. Subject to infrastructure costs of tower and space rent, power and bandwidth being on the same footing, the bidder offering the highest revenue share to BSNL will be made a franchisee.
