Bangladesh’s WiMax revolution begins

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29.09.09

Two months after launching its WiMax business in Bangladesh, we caught up with Augere’s Director of Commercial and Business Development, Martin Harriman, to answer some of the comments posted on the Augere website and to see how much progress has been made by its wholly owned service provider, Qubee (www.qubee.com).

So Martin, tell us what you have been up to since the launch in July?

“We have been very busy. Together with our team at Qubee we have been establishing the distribution and retail network, recruiting personnel and putting the infrastructure in place which will deliver our wireless broadband in Bangladesh.”

Quite a lot of comments were posted on the website by people asking for certain areas to be covered – how will the service be rolled-out?

“Yes, I saw that. We were surprised by the level of comments we received on the Augere website, not least by the supportive and welcoming sentiments which many people expressed. The roll-out will begin in Dhaka. We aim to launch in early October, after Eid. Gulshan and Banani will be the first two areas to receive coverage. The second phase roll-out in Dhaka will take place in November and that will cover the entire city. In response to some of the specific area questions that were asked, Sylhet will be connected in the first half of 2010 and Narayangonj will also be connected in 2010.”

And after that? What about the rest of the country?

“Well the truth is that the license drives us on coverage. By taking it on we committed to provide a certain level of coverage across the country. Under the terms of that agreement every District Headquarter will be connected before the end of 2010. So it’s going to happen and we’re very excited about the expansion of this service and what it will mean for Bangladesh.”

What are the practical barriers in technology and what new shared business models will be required to lower costs further and extend appeal beyond urbanites into rural areas?

“There are no practical barriers to the technology: it is perfectly suited to Bangladesh. As for shared business models we are looking at how to establish ‘white label’ partnerships whereby we resell network capacity to partners who then market it to their own customers. Although we have no plans to do this just yet it is something we’ll consider in more depth during 2010.”

So what connection speeds will you use and how will it work for customers?

”We are conscious that broadband providers around the world quote huge Mbps service speeds but when customers check for themselves they get a fraction of that speed performance. Our ethos has always been to provide customers with the service they pay for. That means for example a 2.3GHz frequency service which will actually deliver as close to 512kpbs as possible. We can’t promise a minimum download speed because it’s a shared medium. But what we can promise is to install enough base stations so as to provide the capacity that customers pay for.

When we go live in Dhaka we’ll be offering try-before-you-buy booths for people to test the service and when they sign-up we’ll provide the WiMax equipment and installation to ensure it’s all working properly. . For the Dhaka roll-out we have 200 engineers that will be busy helping new users get connected. ”

What will the price plans look like? How will the service be packaged?

”Although we have not finalised the packages just yet what I can say is that they’ll be simple. Customers will purchase a speed and a download limit and there’ll be a number of packages – about three or four – which will allow for varied needs. ”

Will there be a package for professionals? Will it be at least 1Mbps?

”We will offer a small business package and that will offer higher speeds for upload and download than consumer packages. I can’t be definitive on how fast it will be but I would expect it to be in the order of 1Mbps; in other words, similar to the service we provide in Pakistan.”

One of the comments we received asked whether there were any health associated with the service; are there any?

”No there are none. We are not using technology which requires very high levels of power output so there are no health dangers whatsoever. ”