India's Tata close to granting $500M WiMAX contract

Tata Communications is close to choosing its mobile WiMAX equipment suppliers for its $500-million 802.16e-based network in India, according to Unstrung. Tata has already deployed fixed WiMAX (802.16d) from Telsima and has signed up some 10,000 customers since launching service in March. It claims that deployment is the largest WiMAX deployment in the world. Now the operator is looking to deploy mobile WiMAX in the 3.3 GHz band, spending $500 million during the next two years. Tata did not name the vendors vying for the contract nor the size of the award, but said it would be significant.

Unstrung's sources, however, say seven vendors are competing for Tata's contract and willing to customize their products for Indian market. Alcatel-Lucent, Alvarion, Cisco (through its Navini acquisition), Huawei Technologies, Motorola, Samsung and Telsima.

For more:
- read Unstrung [1]

Related stories:
Tata claims world's largest WiMAX deployment. Tata story [2]
Telsima, Sequans capitalizing on Indian WiMAX market. Telsima editorial [3]