Alcatel-Lucent India shifts focus to LTE, Services

Alcatel-Lucent has decided to shift the focus of its R&D unit in Chennai, India from WiMAX to LTE, according to Mr Vivek Mohan, President of Alcatel-Lucent's global services business and Managing Director of Alcatel-Lucent India.

“We are betting big on LTE technology and we are already doing related work at our R&D centre in Chennai. We are training our researchers at the centre. There is not much difference between WiMax and LTE when it comes to developing products and solutions, so the shift is not taking too much of an effort” said Mr Mohan, while Speaking to Business Line.

The Chennai R&D centre is a joint venture Of Alcatel-Lucent & Government owned C-DoT. It was set up in 2005 to develop solutions for WiMax.

In another development, Alcatel-Lucent looks to shift its global services headquarters to India. Alcatel-Lucent will invest $500 million over the next three years in India if the global services unit is moved here.

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BWA auction ends, Infotel wins big, Qualcomm gains

With the auction of BWA spectrum concluding today after 117 rounds over 16 days, the government is set to gain $8.6 billion.

The auction for spectrum today ensured Rs 106,336 crore to the government, over three times the original estimate, with successful bidders for Broadband Wireless Access committing over Rs 38,617 crore.

Internet Service Provider Infotel emerged as the only pan-India winner for BWA spectrum by committing Rs 12,872.52 crore. Aircel won spectrum in 8 circles.

While in the Delhi circle, Infotel and Qualcomm emerged winners, with Infotel's winning bid at Rs 2,241.02 cr, Mumbai also saw the same winners, with Infotel bidding Rs 2,292.95 cr. Bharti and Infotel emerged winners in Maharashtra, with Bharti's winning bid at Rs 915.64 cr.

Qualcomm has won one, 20 MHz slot of spectrum in the circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala. Its winning bid was INR4912.54 Crore or approximately USD1.045bn.

Qualcomm said that it anticipates the Government of India will formally approve results of the BWA Auction shortly. The company will soon announce its Indian partners in compliance with the applicable Indian Foreign Direct Investment regulations and will work with its partners towards demonstrating LTE (TD-LTE) technology with the goal of creating LTE infrastructure and device ecosystem.

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BWA auction revenue reaches $5.43 bn

The Indian government's provisional revenue from the sale of BWA services Friday reached Rs.24,439.92 crore ($5.43 billion) and the pan-India licence price was Rs.9,522.35 crore ($2.11 billion).

India Tuesday concluded 77 rounds of the auction of airwaves for BWA services. This is a simultaneous online auction for two slots in each of the country's 22 service areas.

The auction, which began last week, saw the pan-India BWA licence price going up around 444.13 percent from the Rs.1,750 crore base price fixed by the government.

India Gets Ready For LTE

India gets ready for LTE with its first LTE conference. “It is not why LTE, but when and how?” says Telecom Additional Secretary Subodh Kumar at India’s first conference on LTE, LTE INDIA 2010.

LTE standardised by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has emerged as the next generation wireless technology that will lead the growth of mobile broadband services later in this decade. Its adoption by service providers around the world has the potential to generate economies of scale unprecedented by any previous generation of wireless networking technology as it becomes the universal 4G mobile platform used by both GSM and CDMA service providers, the technology experts claimed today at India’s first conference on LTE, LTE INDIA 2010

“Quite a lot of spectrum for this is possibily available for this purpose ” Sh Subodh Kumar told at LTE India 2010 today. “If it is not now, certainly later” he added discussing different bands in which Fourth Generation technology could improve upon the customer richness of 3G and reduce costs for the 3G operators. “It is the leading star for the next generation when high speed Internet would become pervasive narrowing the digital divide” claimed Shashi Dharan, managing director of Bharat Exhibitions, the orgnisers of the conference.

The Fourth Generation is on offer globally by 64 telecom service providers in 31 countries, said Mr.Adrian Scrase, head of Mobile Competence Centre of the 3G Partnership Project(3GPP). Most of them are the largest in the world, like Horizon of US and China Mobile. Some 22 LTE based networks would be operational by the end of this year, he added. “Why should India be different?” was the question he proposed.

How LTE would serve the mobile telecom industry was defined at the conference. Also there should be no apprehension for the 3G operators who have offered in this country Rs 70,000 crores for the 3G spectrum. “3G is part of the Fourth Generation” that would subserve 3G also, said Abhay Savargaonkar, senior vice-president, 3G networks, Bharti Airtel. It improves richness of customer experience, reduces cost per megabit and also increases average revenue per user for the operator. For customes also it would bring down cost per bit for heavy users. It would be essential as the “on demand culture” was spreading fast. There were 1.5 billion Apple users, 100 billion You Tube customers, 245 billion Yahoo fans and 413 million Google key-ins at any moment and this was spreading fast- that gave an idea of the bandwidth that would be needed in future. LTE provided the answer.

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BWA Auction Update Day 2: Bids Reach $670M

BWA Auction has reached to 3199.29 crore ($670 million) rupees at the end of Day. So far 10 rounds of auction has been completed.

Today the Pan-India BWA license cost rose by 844.76 crores. See below statewise details reported by the country's Department of Telecommunications today

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BWA spectrum auction set to begin in India

After 183 rounds of bidding in 34 days, the 3G spectrum auction raised approximately Rs 67,719 crore (US$15 billion) in commitments from the carriers.

A new auction for broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum is expected to begin within days. This new BWA auction will offer 2 blocks of 20MHz in the 2.3GHz band across the same 22 service areas.

As many as 11 operators are in the fray for BWA spectrum. The reserve price for BWA spectrum has been fixed at Rs 1,750 crore and only two slots of 20 MHz each are on the block.

DoT said 11 telecom companies "Aircel Ltd, Augere (Mauritius), Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Infotel Broadband Services, Qualcomm, Reliance WiMax, Spice Internet Service Provider, Tata Communications Internet Services, Tikona Digital Networks and Vodafone Essar" have qualified for the broadband and wireless access (BWA) auction.

Qualcomm's participation in India's Broadband Wireless Access auction is expected to help the company in accelerating the use of TD-LTE. Unlike WiMAX, TD-LTE does not have a substantial market share for encouraging vendors to develop devices. India's 2.3 GHz spectrum band and rapidly growing demand for high broadband services is well suited for TD-LTE technology.

source:LteWorld

India 3G Spectrum Auction reach $3.33 bln

Bids for nationwide 3G mobile spectrum licences in India reached Rs 150 billion ($3.33 billion) on the 29th day of an auction, an indication the government could earn revenue of more than Rs 600 billion from the sale.

The bids for the pan-India licenses have far exceeded the government's base price of 35 billion rupees.

As of Thursday, 162 rounds of bidding had been completed, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said on its website. Nine mobile operators, including Bharti Airtel , Reliance Communications and Vodafone's Indian unit, are participating in the auction.

When the 3G auction is concluded, the Indian government will commence the auction of its 4G BWA spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band.

For complete details check 3G Auction Update: 14th May 2010