Four operators get BWA spectrum

NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday allotted spectrum to four operators, including RIL-owned Infotel, in all 22 circles and Bharti Airtel in four, paving the way for starting high-speed mobile broadband.

According to senior officials in the department of telecom ( DoT) 20 Mhz of spectrum has been given to the four firms — Infotel, Bharti, Aircel and Tikona Digital, which have licences.

The other two — Qualcom and Augere (Mauritius) — would be given the radio waves as soon as they procure telecom licences, they said, adding there is no other problem with their cases.

The operators have already started talks with the telecom vendors such as Samsung, Motorola, Ericsson and few Chinese firms such as Huawei and ZTE for deploying either WiMax or long term evolutio (LTE)technology platform.

Both long term evolution and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMax) are broadband wireless access ( BWA) and are similar but rival technologies.