Mukesh Ambani back with a bang

Online, July 23, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Reliance Industries owned RIL-Infotel, which is the pan-India winner of broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum, has started trials of WiMax service as per industry sources.

Mukesh Ambani's RIL-Infotel has installed, as per the source, five WiMax base station in which three are from Alvarion and two are from Samsung. The company is checking interoperability among various BTSs and devices along with factors that hold key to a business.

Infotel won BWA spectrum in all 22 telecom circles across the country for a whopping Rs 12,847.77 crore. On the same day RIL had announced to acquire 95 per cent stake in the company.

The entry of Mukesh Ambani into telecom will create death knell for several players. The mobile industry is yet to recover from shocks following the implementation of the per second billing concept. Mukesh Ambani, when launched Reliance Infocomm, was the first to take on Vodafone and Bharti Airtel with cost effective schemes. Mahendra Nahata created history when HFCL won several mobile circles when the telecom industry was opened up for private players in mid 1990s. But Nahatas could not complete their mission. Mukesh Ambani, who settled his issues with brother Anil Ambani, can now enter telecom space and is looking for buying out operators.

The success of WiMax trials being run by Reliance-Infotel will be a big blow to Qualcomm, the evangelist of TD LTE technology, which is expected to make foray into global market by late 2012 or early 2013.

According to WiMax Forum, there are more than 300 WiMax devices of all types like datacards, Indoor CPE, WiMax Hand Sets etc, already certified by it for use in more than 540 mobile WiMax networks in 140 countries. There are more addition expected by WiMax Forum to this existing range of devices.