WiMAX may stall in India

India is supposed to be the hotbed for WiMAX technology since it's seen as an effective way to bridge the country's haves and have-nots. But the WiMAX Forum warned this week that India could miss out on the revolution unless it reallocates spectrum. Pretty much every country around the world has allocated the 2.5-GHz band for WiMAX, but that band in India is already used by the Department of Space for its Insat satellites, and the DoS doesn't want to move. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has instead recommended 100 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.3- to 3.4-GHz band for the service, which hurts India's operators because they won't get the economies of scale needed to offer service at a cheap price. However, that proposal has also encountered resistance since DoS controls the 3.4- to 3.6-GHz band as well. The WiMAX Forum is also mad that India has opted to allocate 15-megahertz wide channels instead of 20-megahertz--the minimum size that WiMAX technology operates in. That means throughput could be a significant problem. Ironically, the Indian government's definition of broadband is 250 kbps.

For more about the WiMAX Forum's spectrum complaints in India:
- take a look at this article from EE Times