Tata Telecom launches second major WiMAX network using Telsima gear

While Sprint sorts out its financial woes, South Asia and India have started hogging the WiMAX limelight. This week Tata Communications became the second major operator to wholeheartedly embrace WiMAX in India, and the third on the subcontinent.

Tata is rolling out Telsima WiMAX gear in 110 cities, including some of the world’s largest metropolitan markets: Mumbai (Bombay), Delhi and Chennai. Unlike BSNL’s rollout of Soma gear in January, the WiMAX rollout will focus on enterprise services rather than residential, but in the 15 largest markets, Tata will also offer residential broadband services. The deployment also differs in spectrum used. While Soma is using the global 2.5 GHz band used by Sprint and Clearwire, Tata’s deployment is in 3.3 GHz, close to the 3.5 GHz bands identified for WiMAX in Europe, but in 12-MHz channels.

Otherwise there are some eerie similarities between the two launches. Both carriers chose small vendors, eschewing the big network equipment makers like Motorola, Nortel Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. Both operators are tasking those small vendors’ massive buildouts. Soma’s network will cover 200 million; Telsima’s will deploy 3000 base station sectors. And both use IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX technology for fixed wireless services.

Meanwhile, next door in Pakistan, Wateen Telecom has rolled out its own broadband network using Motorola WiMAX gear in a nationwide deployment. The three are among the largest WiMAX rollouts in the world to date. If the pace of WiMAX adoption in India keeps up, it could easily eclipse Sprint and Clearwire’s lagging efforts in the U.S. While Sprint had promised a network covering 100 million people in the U.S. by the end of the year, it may opt to shrink its plans unless it can find a paying partner to help build it. Clearwire continues to roll out broadband wireless networks and add subscribers, but it still hasn’t launched any commercial WiMAX gear.

A lot of attention has been focused on Sprint as the marquee carrier deploying WiMAX, which has led many in the industry to claim WiMAX’s fortunes lie with whether Sprint makes a business of it. But WiMAX’s momentum in India and other developing countries may counter that argument. While none of the deployments in Eastern Europe or Asia incorporate mobility, they still use Mobile WiMAX gear, meaning they could eventually support full mobility and WiMAX Forum certified devices.

If WiMAX’s champions come from Asia and not the US, the vendor landscape could be radically different. India has shown a preference for the specialty WiMAX vendors, not the Tier 1 vendors. In a study released this week, Infonetics Research found that WiMAX became an $800 million industry in 2007, but it was dominated by fixed WiMAX deployments, which are dominated by smaller vendors like Alvarion and Airspan. Motorola was the leader in Mobile WiMAX gear, but with big wins going to companies like Soma and Telsima, the big vendors expected to control the Mobile WiMAX space may not be so certain.