Indian carrier plans to cover 250 million people with mobile WiMAX: Country’s state-owned operator partners with Soma Networks for deployment

The second-most populated country in the world is woefully un-covered when it comes to broadband Internet, but India’s government has mandated that 20 million broadband lines be in service by 2010. Companies are scrambling to meet the deadline.
Thus, Soma Networks Inc. announced it partnered with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., India’s state-owned and largest telecommunications company, to deploy an expansive mobile WiMAX network. The network will cover three of the country’s fastest-growing telecommunications circles, providing access to a population of about 250 million, Soma Networks Founder and CEO Yatish Pathak said.
“It’s not like they’ve given us some backwater states,” he said. “The fact that we’ve got the richest states, (BSNL) is hoping for our success so they can expand to other states.”
Soma is now shipping thousands of base stations for deployment as it works with the provider to get the network running at full speed as soon as possible. “We’re ramping as fast as we can,” Pathak said.
The network will provide broadband data and voice services in urban, suburban and rural areas, the company said. When the network is fully launched, it will cover 400 cities, Pathak said.
Soma said the network will provide a DSL-like experience with up to 1.5 megabits per second on the downlink and a few hundred kilobytes per second on the uplink.
As WiMAX networks continue to be launched internationally, Clearwire Corp. and Sprint Nextel Corp. have re-affirmed their commitment to rolling out mobile WiMAX services this year.