The Indian Broadband market is expected to expand almost exponentially over the next five to six years according to a report published recently and it would appear that the use of WiMAX (short for World Interoperability for Microwave Access) is leading the charge with usage expecting to rise to over 21 million users by 2014. WiMAX where installed correctly is designed to provide greater efficiency, development and utilisation of broadband services.



This echoes further additional reports that confirm that the Indian economy is flourishing and the demand for telecommunications networks and services has finally outpaced the availability provided for by what are euphemistically described as conventional legacy wired telecommunications.

It would appear that within the Indian marketplace that vendors, operators and system integrators are all coming together to engineer a bandwidth revolution, the like of which has never been seen before.

Leading the charge in this particular telecommunications sub sector would appear to be Reliance Technology Ventures; the VC (Venture Capital) subsidiary of Mumbai based Reliance AD Group.

One of reliance technology ventures sister companies reliance communications is at present one of India's largest CDMA (code division multiple access) suppliers and is now serving its intention to move into the GSM marketplace.

It has achieved this by its recent funding of a large undisclosed investment in E-Band, a San Diego based manufacturer and designer of multigigabit wireless communications systems.

Given the current rate of growth within the Indian marketplace industry experts are predicting with current levels of investment and expansion we may be at the beginning of what could possibly be one of the world's top three WiMAX marketplaces.

At the forefront of this expansion have been major carriers such as Reliance Technologies who are already running commercial WiMAX services in Bangalore. Should these initial tests prove to be successful and if you want to go on initial criteria and that would certainly be the case, they are predicting that by 2014 the accumulated WiMAX subscriber base in India alone will reach 21 million.

Partly because of its rapid expansion equipment costs the general market costs are dropping whilst revenues are rising. Costs in India are being driven down faster than in any of the major worldwide marketplace.

At present industry analysts state the penetration of broadband throughout India at present lies at an extremely low figure of .2%. With the new technologies and investment rapidly being made available for the industry, experts are predicting the market to double within the next couple of years.

It cannot be denied that globally, investment in emerging wireless technology services such as WiMAX is growing certainly more than any other similar mobile technology.

It is one of those things that you can get a rough estimation of how mature technology marketplace is when you sit back and analyze the number of hardware equipment manufacturers who are prepared to ?jump in with both feet,? desperate to claim vital market share.

Elsewhere in Asia, WiMAX is expanding and it would appear that from other marketplaces, certain Asian telephone companies are planning to run controlled tests of these services based on WiMAX technology in the United Kingdom next year.

Certainly it would appear that the initial WiMAX tests run by Reliance WiMAX in Bangalore are going well and that the costs of the Reliance Data Card are expected to drop accordingly.