Telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) is all set to float two tenders with cumulative value of Rs 4,000 crore for rolling out WiMax in the country within two months. While the first tender of Rs 2,000 crore for launching WiMax in rural India will be floated next week, the one for urban India will be floated within two months.

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access or WiMax in short, is a telecommunications technology aimed at providing wireless data over long distances in a variety of ways. It allows a user to browse the internet on a laptop computer without physically connecting the laptop to a router, hub or switch via an ethernet cable.

Confirming the development, BSNL chief general manager (Calcutta) SK Chakravarti said, “The project for setting up WiMax in rural India will be funded out of the Universal Service Obligation fund and it will initially cover 25,000 villages. The project includes offering broadband connection through this WiMax network in 40,000-odd primary and secondary schools by 2008. Additionally, BSNL will set up 50,000 WiMax kiosks. The entire set of service will at least be on 2.5G technology.”

“The second tender valued at Rs 2,000 crore will cover 70 cities including Kolkata and it will be floated within the next two months. Equipment for setting up network in the cities will, however, be funded by BSNL itself. We hope to start offering the service in cities by the end of 2008,” he said. Digressing to broadband speed, Mr Chakravarti said,

“BSNL is also working on a project to offer at least 100 mbps of broadband speed for all. Currently, it is about 2 mbps. This will be done in stages where in the first stage fibre lines to the nodes will be converted to fibre optics.

In the second stage, the plan is to offer fibre to premises and this will allow 100 mbps. We hope to achieve this in the next two and half years.”

Talking about the current waiting list for new broadband connections, Mr Chakravarti said: “There are about 9,000 applicants waiting currently. We hope to bring down the waiting period from three months to about two weeks soon. The delay was the result of exhausted capacity for 1.5 lakh connections.”

Currently, we are in the process of installing additional capacity and the waiting list will come down”.
Src: Economic Times