American wireless telecommunications research and development company, Qualcomm’s bid to enter India’s Wireless Broadband Access (WBA) space has been finally approved by the Department of Telecommunication (DoT). However, Qualcomm had to drag DoT to Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) in order to secure the License.
Qualcomm had “secured” broadband wireless access (BWA) license in Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala circles through a bidding process last year, only to be refuted. That refusal was going to cost Qualcomm nearly INR 5,000 Crores (USD 1 Billion) it had paid for its permits to be an Internet Service Provider (ISP)!
Though DoT had claimed numerous discrepancies like, not submitting the application on time & appointing 4 subsidiaries, whereas it should nominate only one; all the allegations were scrapped by TDSAT
Qualcomm is not a new player in India. It has continued its march (or crawl due to DoT) by joint ventures, offering Internet Access Devices (limited to CDMA Platform).
DoT, however, still insists that Qualcomm should nominate only 1 subsidiary that would be the nominee for all the four zones the company won spectrum for. Qualcomm is eager to agree & said that “India’s DoT seems to have a different interpretation and, since it has not yet issued them the license, and in the interest of expediting the licensing process, the company has written a letter to DoT on 9th Sept 2011 agreeing to DoT’s interpretation of granting one license instead of four. Upon doing so, we would then merge the three other entities into the fourth, which would hold the license.”
Earlier Qualcomm had also tried to bring the much touted WiMAX, but those ventures failed due to LTE adoption by its closest associate Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance.
With almost INR 40,000 Crores being earned by India, & Mumbai’s Broadband ISP License being secured only by Infotel & MTNL, besides Qualcomm; does this mean a breather for Mumbaikars, who can now expect the prices of Wireless Internet access to come down?
Author: Alap Naik Desai
