Three to offer free mobile broadband to rural areas

Mobile operator Three is to give away free broadband to people in rural areas where there are poor or non-existent connections, known as ‘not-spots'. The mobile operator has teamed up with the Countryside Alliance and will also get input from charity Race Online 2012, to form the Rural Broadband Working Group. The plan is to give away around 4 million MBs of free connectivity for a year, along with the mobile broadband devices that are needed to get people online. The first village to receive free connectivity from Three will be Gringley-on-the-Hill in North Nottinghamshire. The village of around 750 people has a pub, village hall, church and school but poor-quality access to fixed-line broadband services. The village will receive around 30 mobile broadband dongles and compact wireless routers, known as Mifi devices, that act as mobile wireless hotspots. Some scepticism has been voiced about Three's motives for getting involved in this project, with a few analysts believing it is about helping the company when it bids for more wireless spectrum. However Sarah Lee, head of policy for the Countryside Alliance said mobile internet access "could be the answer" to bridging the digital divide in the countryside. "The recent Government announcement of financial help to bring broadband to rural communities is welcome, but not enough, and may yet take several years to be properly realised," she said. The Group will now work with local communities to identify 11 areas. Three will provide the chosen communities with the mobile broadband services for a 12-month period and the devices needed to get online. In addition, Three said it would be providing free public access in communal areas such as pubs and community centres.

4G, 3G services to mature parallelly in India

With 3G technology gaining momentum across the globe, India is prepping itself to welcome the 4G advancement. If 3G could revolutionize the entire communication sector, people are just wondering what is 4G going to change. Analysts believe that 4G would be the big leap towards a broadband wireless revolution by using core set up of the 2G/3G networks. However, speculations that 4G could affect the existing 3G business seems baseless to the industry experts. 4G is definitely a successor to the 3G and 2G families but it is expected that both the technologies will run and grow parallelly in India. 4G will reportedly complement 3G with its data services. It is reported that Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer Ericsson is working with many players in India on long term evolution (LTE) technology. The company has already conducted field trials of 4G LTE mobile technology with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and Qualcomm and is in talks with other players as well. It is reported that by 2013, 3G and 4G services will be used by only 30 per cent of wireless subscribers, but these next-generation networks will bring in half of wireless carriers' revenues. Under most circumstances, 3G networks and wider-bandwidth OFDM-based technologies, commonly referred to as ‘4G’,work hand-in-hand. Rather than competing with each other, if 3G and 4G collaborate they could bring mass revolution in communication and data transfer.

Tata Teleservices Launches Tata Photon on Rev B Wireless Broadband

Tata Teleservices has announced the new Tata Photon services on REV B. These services will be available in 27 major metros and cities across the country, with the rest of the country to be mapped soon thereafter. We have been the clear market leaders in the mobile broadband access space for more than a while now, and the launch of Tata Photon on Rev.B is the next step in carrying that legacy forward. Tata Photon on Rev.B will provide our customers with unfettered mobile broadband access and enable them to experience super-fast speeds on their laptops, PCs and other devices. Today’s increasing demand for powerful and faster networks continues to inspire us to continually upgrade our network and maintain our technological leadership—by consistently being amongst the first to introduce game-changing products and services. Tata Photon on Rev.B underlines the superiority of mobile broadband technology and is set to become a rage amongst Internet-users everywhere,” -Mr Deepak Gulati, Executive President, Mobility Business, Tata Teleservices Limited