Secunderabad will score one over Hyderabad very soon and become WiFi-enabled, if developments are anything to go by. This was made clear during an interaction on Thursday, with the Director-General of the Cellular Operators Association of India, Rajan S. Mathews and Ericsson India Head Technology Manoj Dawane.
Mr. Rajan Mathews said they had a preliminary meeting with the persons concerned, in the Telangana Government to take the project of WiFi-enabling Secunderabad forward over the next few months. Asked about the timeline, he declined to comment and instead asked for the Ericsson representative to take a call on that.
Asked to expand on the finer details, Mr. Manoj Dawane said that they had just finished the first meeting and that a lot depended on factors like the number of users, the adaptability and capability of mobile operators to use the available bandwidth and the like.
Considering that the nature of the project was per se, involved the usage of ‘Non-licence spectrum’ it would be difficult to straight-away put a timeframe. “If is for all operators to take a call and express their interest,” said Mr. Manoj, adding that it was better to go slow but surely, without compromise on security issues.
Speaking on regulations of electro-magnetic field (EMF) regulations, Mr. Rajan Mathews said that India was far ahead of most countries, including the so-called, developed United Kingdom, United States of America, European and Latin American nations. As against an accepted EMF regulation of 4.5 metres square, India could boast of a bare 0.45 metres square, with the USA having 12 metres square, he said.
India was thus in tune with countries like Belgium, Luxembourg, China and Italy, as far as EMF was concerned. Asked about the requirements of mobile operators to provide 4G mobile services, he said that more BTS (Base Tower Stations) were required. For a comparison, he said that as against a requirement of 100 BTS for 2G services, the figure was 136 when it came to providing 4G services.
