NEW DELHI: Beceem Communications, a pioneer in the wireless Broadband technology called WiMAX, on Monday said it was in talks with at least four leading mobile operators to switch over or upgrade their network to offer the application to subscribers.
Targeting that 10 million subscribers would use wireless Broadband by 2008, Beceem's Paul Raj said "WiMax is the only technology to get into wireless broadband services and Beceem is the only vendor so far in India to offer this."
He said the operators would have to invest between 150 to 200 dollars per subscriber to upgrade their systems but this would provide the real growth as far as value added services/applications were concerned.
The revenues from wireless voice (simple mobile phones) has been reducing with the increasing competition and value-added applications were the main source of revenue for these operators and wireless Broadband would be right application at right time.
"Several Indian service providers have already acquired suitable spectrum licenses to deploy wireless Broadband services and are planning early rollouts in 2006. WiMAX is the first truly broadband technology available to meet Indian market needs," he said.
On the price of the chip, the company declined to comment saying prices would come down as the usage goes up. Currently, the chip is available for about 100 dollars.
