According to P N Padukone, Sr Deputy Director General of Dot Telecommunication Engineering Centre WiMAX could be the answer to ‘last mile’ connectivity issues that prohibit Internet connection in rural India. Now its easy to brush this off as a over optimistic statement but one look at the RNCOS’ report “WiMAX - A Market Update (2006-2007)” that discusses the various aspects of the WiMAX technology and addresses the various drivers to WiMAX such as performance, coverage etc. that are pushing the implementation of this technology and you know this statement could be a reality.

Here are the Key Findings of the report.

• Most of the WiMAX deployments across the world are still in a trial  phase providing only high-speed internet service but, in future, the largest markets for WiMAX will be for mobile applications.
• The number of worldwide WiMAX users is forecasted to reach 14.9 million in 2009, creating over $13.8 billion dollars in service revenues for WiMAX market.
• WiMAX is expected to become a predominant portion of the broadband wireless access market by 2009 because of the wide support it has achieved from leading equipment vendors.
• The Asia-pacific region has the largest share in terms of WiMAX subscribers, attributed to large population and emerging nature of economies in the region.
• The regions like Eastern Europe and Latin America are increasingly adapting to WiMAX technology due to less broadband penetration level.
• In more developed regions like in Western Europe, WiMAX adoption has been slow due to the high levels of broadband penetration.
• North America is by far the leading region in terms of the number of WiMAX licences, with a total of 394 WiMAX license holders.

One of the most notable findings are "largest markets for WiMAX will be for mobile applications". This is because recently a report from TDG said that mobile subscriber base in India could cross 350 million by 2010. Now if you put these two findings together its not difficult to imagine the possibilities. Also by 2010 high end mobile prices would have dropped enough to be accessible to the rural masses. So lets hope we see a connected India in the future and the connection is not only limited to Urban India.

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