WiMax set to be boon to villages

WiMax, a new technology standard that will allow wireless devices to talk to each other over longer distances, could well be the technology to connect rural and remote areas with broadband services. The Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) said this here on Thursday.

WiMax or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is the latest of the wireless "last mile" broadband technologies.

It uses a wider range of frequencies, which telecom carriers see as going where conventional technologies can't "technically, physically or economically" go, MAIT said in a release.

Conventional technologies will include using regular copper wire, digital subscriber lines or cable connections, the release said.

On Thursday, MAIT organised a seminar here to generate awareness about the new standard that will go mainstream in six-nine months. Interested players include the whole range, from chip makers to content providers.

In an unrelated press meet the same day, Amit Sharma, a vice president with Motorola Inc, told reporters that WiMax will take "another six to nine months to get standardised but when it does it will aid in faster and more efficient data transfer."

Companies such as Motorola, making cellular phone handsets to mobile phone network equipment, see "opportunity at the two ends of the spectrum using broadband", Sharma said.

"At the hi-end, the rich retail customer will be willing to pay for various gizmos that will play with broadband and at the other end, Motorola is interested in taking broadband access to the rural areas to grow its business."

WiMax is capable of delivering broadband Internet and extending services like Internet telephony throughout India without major disruption to transportation and other services.

It requires no blocking roads or traffic to dig miles of trenches for laying cables, no overhanging cables and no waiting periods for large telecom infrastructure to build up, the release said.

WiMax allows signals to bounce from one wireless station to the next even without a line-of-sight.

It will bounce off buildings and obstacles, all the way to people's homes, to deliver the Internet to everybody's doorstep in an affordable manner, the release said.