Qualcomm confirms Indian bid to push TD-LTE
Aims to create an international ecosystem around TD-LTE, but will Intel join the race to preserve WiMAX' clear run?
Published: 17 March, 2010
READ MORE: Spectrum | India | Qualcomm | LTE | WiMAX
Qualcomm has confirmed that it intends to bid for spectrum in India's forthcoming broadband wireless auctions, a move designed to help create an international ecosystem around TD-LTE, and damage WiMAX' chances of having its most important potential market entirely to itself.
The rising demand for TDD spectrum and networks from carriers round the world, to support data services, has prompted an aggressive response from the LTE community, which is keen to prevent the main TDD standard, WiMAX, from having the market to itself. The development of TD-LTE has been accelerated and as well as its key supporter, China Mobile - which only has TDD spectrum for 3G and 4G - other operators are carrying out evaluations, including Orange. Qualcomm's is the latest move in this concerted effort to make TD-LTE a strong option for carriers that gain TDD spectrum, with an large ecosystem.
India and China are the largest markets with new TDD spectrum coming to the table soon, and until Qualcomm's move, WiMAX was assumed to be the only choice for the winners of the upcoming 2.3GHz auctions (although officially the licenses are technology neutral) because of the stringent timescales for improved broadband in India. Now it could lose one of the licenses to an LTE group, leaving it with the roll-outs of state-owned telcos BSNL and MTNL, which already have their spectrum, and the remaining private bidder.
Two licenses will be sold to private carriers or consortia, with a reserve price of INR17.5bn ($390m) each. Qualcomm will partner with unnamed firms to make a bid. Its statement said: "Qualcomm and its partners will decide the venture's strategy in due course. Qualcomm's goal is to attract an operator partner or partners into the venture at the appropriate time for construction of a TD-LTE network in compliance with the Indian government's roll-out requirement for the BWA spectrum and then to exit the venture."
It now remains to be seen whether Intel agrees to lend its own weight to a WiMAX venture, to preserve a full house for its favored technology in India. According to Light Reading, the chairman of the WiMAX Forum's Indian chapter, CS Rao, says: "Intel should come forward, as it has done in other countries." Intel was rumored last fall to be preparing to join a bidding consortium anyway.
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