You all are aware of the WinTel lobby which prevailed once upon a time and the fat management layers in these companies still think that they can get it to work. In the context of this management attitude, Mr. Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel wrote to Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Hon. PM of India claiming that WiMax is the best technology to provide broadband services.
The PMOs office sought the opinion of DoT and the telecom industry in India. COAI, representing the GSM operators gave a befitting reply and strongly disagreed with Mr. Otellini’s claim. COAI said,
We would like to submit that India should follow a technology neutral approach which would allow fair play for all the technologies. All technologies should be given fair and equitable opportunities and then it should be left to the market forces to decide.
Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is the next step in user experience and is essential to take mobile broadband to the mass market. It provides benefits like lower cost, spectrum flexibility, improved performance, complements 3G with backward compatibility. LTE supports both frequency division duplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD) and can be deployed in all IMT bands. LTE is on track, attracting global industry support and it is expected that this would be an obvious trend in India too
In a related development in the US, it is very likely that Clearwire may dump WiMax in favor of LTE which is looking forward to 4G convergence.
What does this mean for BWA Auction – There are only 2 licenses available in the auction and if any one of the members of COAI win along with Qualcomm, will BSNL dare to walk the WiMax path ? Honestly, the LTE tone by COAI is surprising and only time will tell how broadband in India will shape up. Any thoughts ?
Intel is using its size and influence to make such absurd claims. Intel hasn’t been able to counter the ARM chips and has comprehensively lost the mobile war to Qualcomm, TI, Apple etc.
Intel is betting its future on WiMax which doesn’t have a sound business case.
I see history repeating itself