WiMAX Helping Asia's Farmers

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The BreezeMAX antenna was installed 70 meters above the ground on a local tower, with the base station connected to a fiber-optic backhaul service.

The VoIP server is hosted from a site in Hanoi. A VoIP gateway and session border controller also were installed in the province. CPEs or WiMAX modems were installed in key spots around the city, such as the local post office, health care centers, secondary schools, hotels and a farm on the town's outskirts. At each site, a SIP-compatible VoIP phone was linked to the CPE unit, providing high-speed broadband and telephone service with minimal cost and complexity.

Mazer says a second-phase WiMAX rollout has just begun in a nearby mountainous area that lacks any fiber backhaul. In that case, the WiMAX base station is being linked to an IPStar satellite backhaul service to provide Internet and VoIP connectivity. The second phase is to be completed in October

The Lao Cai deployment was undertaken as part of USAID'S Last Mile Initiative, a global program launched in 2004 to bring modern communications infrastructure to farmers and small businesses in rural areas that have been bypassed by major telecom networks. Similar programs are also underway in Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Macedonia.

Intel has its own rural development effort, the World Ahead Program, a $1 billion, four-year attempt to improve technology access to developing communities. The company has worked with governments in more than 50 countries under the program, which includes a strong WiMAX component. Intel has also established four research and design centers in Shanghai, Mumbai, Cairo and Sao Paolo to help the effort.

The company says it has helped promote more than 250 WiMAX trials worldwide as part of the effort to extend low-cost broadband access to undeveloped areas. Intel supplies the silicon chips used in such WiMAX deployments.

Intel is hardly the only company to actively engage bringing the telecom rural revolution to less-developed areas in an effort to grow local businesses. "Nokia-Siemens Networks believes that by 2015, there will be five billion people, or 70% of the population, connected via devices that will connect them to other people and to content and to services from the Internet," says Dick Helmstaedt, strategy manager, broadband access for Nokia-Siemens. "The developing world is key to that growth."

Helmstaedt adds that as much as 50% of those newly connected will come from China and India. "If you think about the innovation, particularly in wireless as many of these areas will deploy wireless networks, it's really quite exciting," he says. In June Nokia-Siemens struck a deal with India's BSNL to modernize the carrier's network. BSNL began a mass rollout of DSL technology in rural areas earlier this year.

Sleeping giants

India and China may well be the sleeping giants of the rural revolution. "In major emerging markets like China and India, rural broadband services are virtually non-existent," notes Marshall of the Yankee Group. "The business case to date has typically made it extremely challenging for these services to be offered."

However, Marshall adds that new cost structures are emerging that could enable rural broadband "in areas where there are already anchor communications services such as mobile. The greatest challenges we see include a lack of available transmission and backhaul capability for economically delivering the broadband services and availability of low-cost devices and premises equipment."

Rural deployments in China have also been challenging. Ovum estimates that broadband growth is slowing dramatically in the country, challenging operators to find new sources of growth. In a recent report, analyst Kevin Lee noted that the slowdown "will entrench a digital divide because broadband is approaching maturity in the big cities, while the rural markets remain almost untapped."

Another complication is that the lack of a clear policy by China for spectrum allocation and use has largely blocked the wireless broadband option.