Gartner: India to Remain Niche Market for WiMAX

• Posted: Monday, March 31, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Broadband, India, WiMAX

Research firm Gartner predicted that India will remain a niche market for WiMAX until 2009, despite the fact that the Indian government is advocating the technology for broadband connectivity in rural areas. Gartner predicts that the country will have just 6.9 million mobile and fixed WiMAX connections by the end of 2011.

The reason: "Although presented as an important driver for broadband policy in India, the Indian government has failed to effectively motivate operators to roll out country-wide mobile broadband. WiMAX has been selected by the Indian government to connect rural areas to the Internet.

However, low PC penetration will lead to limited demand in the near term. WiMax is still a niche technology and limited to enterprise and high-end residential users in urban India," according to the firm.

India had only 3.4 million broadband subscribers in January 2008, less than the target of 9 million by 2007 set by the country's broadband policy, said Naresh Singh, principal research analyst with Gartner. Mobile frequencies will not be available in the short term, so most WiMax connections in the short- and mid-term will be for nomadic or fixed-wireless applications. [FierceBroadbandWireless]

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