Massive WiMax Network for India

An anonymous reader writes "Engadget reports that the largest Indian telecom company is planning to build a mobile WiMax network covering three states on the subcontinent capable of serving 250 million people. State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is leaning on Soma Networks to build the broadband-speed network in response to government requirement that 20 million broadband lines be in service by 2010." Meanwhile I can't even get cable. Maybe it's time to move to India.

Comments

Tongue in cheek to the submitter

[Dunbal]

Maybe it's time to move to India.

      Why not. Your job already has.

Re:Tongue in cheek to the submitter

[stonewolf]

Well, I was one of those people doing high level design working in the R&D department of my company. I did a lot of research and design and a fair about of coding for the products we were developing.

One day I came in and found out that all the US employees of the company were being laid off. The owners of the company had found a software company in India that they could just buy for nothing and moved *all* the work, including R&D, to India. I guess that is at least one data point against the idea that only the grunt work has moved to India.

The first year I was unemployed I was able get a few interviews and some contract working running doing testing and one gig helping a company figure out how incompetent the US development staff was. (There are a lot of people all over the world who can write a program but are not qualified to design so much as a turd.)

The second year there were fewer contract jobs and interviews.

The third year I retrained as a teacher. After the third year the *only* company that has shown any interest in hiring me was an Indian company that was desperate enough for experienced people to offer to pay my relocation to India. After my kids are out of college my wife and I are seriously considering moving to India or China. I know a couple of people in my situation who are now living like kings pulling down what would be considered good US salaries, being paid in Euros, living in India and China.

Now I make a good wage (for an Indian) teaching people in the US what "click and drag" means. Believe it or not, but a *huge* portion of the people graduating from high school in the US have never used a PC and are scared shitless of having to use one. An even bigger portion of people over thirty do not know what "click and drag" means.

So, lets cut the crap about the quality of the jobs going to India. The only reason Indians aren't getting those jobs is that so many of them do not have the experience to do them. In India those jobs are being filled by Americans and Europeans with decades of experience. Not to mention the huge number of Indians and Chinese who went to school in the US and have worked here for decades who are now going back to start, run, or do high level work, in India and China.

Stonewolf

Like mobile phones

[apathy maybe]

There is a good reason for under-developed countries like India not to invest in cabling. It is the same reason why such countries have so many mobile phones as compared to landlines.

Mobile phone towers are a lot cheaper to put up then running cables everywhere, they are a lot easier to upgrade, etc. (One reason why Japan and (West) Germany were able to do so well economically after WW2 was all the new equipment, all the old stuff having been bombed. Yes the money helped, but France got that money too...)

Anyway, good oh.

Re:Like mobile phones

[freedom_india]

Unfortunately mobile towers have the least redundancy in disaster times.
All mobile towers have a 99% utilisation in india.
It means if all the mobile users dial at the same time, you get a network busy tone. Heck i get a network busy tone about 30% of the time.
During a storm the mobile network is the first to fail.

Meanwhile the landline is the strongest network india has.
If the power goes off, the generators in the exchanges run it for 24 hours, and even if they fail, the batteries keep them for another 14 hours.
The generators are topped off with fuel almost weekly.

The mobile towers run on batteries for 7 hours max. After that they start dropping off one by one.