Rolling out MBB services and applications boosts entrepreneurship and has far greater positive impact for small businesses and enterprises. MBB enabled networks also create jobs, encourage new businesses across the value chain, improve productivity and boost consumer spending, impacting the GDP positively. A report from Professor Leonard Waverman from the London Business School and the GSMA shows that the release of new spectrum for MBB services in 2009 could contribute as much as the equivalent of $211 billion and $95 billion each to China's and India’s GDP.

This is because provision and quick availability of information works like a magnet and draws people by itself to participate and contribute to development, becoming change agents in the process. In fact, access to information about government and non-government development programmes, employment opportunities, schooling and healthcare options, political and economic developments…the possibilities resulting from community inclusion in development due to spread of MBB are endless. For India, MBB can thus spearhead development, driving ‘inclusion’ and active participation from citizens and communities in nation building and simultaneously help bridge the urban-rural digital divide.

It was with the perspective of helping bridge the ‘digital divide’ that Ericsson conceived Gramjyoti – a joint initiative with a host of partners across 18 villages and 15 towns in Tamil Nadu which successfully demonstrated that access to hi-speed internet or broadband can catalyse socio-economic development and improve health and lives of the rural masses. Using MBB, villagers, who had little access to amenities we take for granted in urban India, found themselves experiencing the benefits of hi-speed connectivity in real time. People felt empowered to be able to access education services, participate in governance, get medical advice and be entertained using applications such as e-learning, e-governance and tele-medicine.

Setting the stage for mobile broadband
From the above facts, it is critical that we make the correct technology choice today for deriving maximum benefit from the MBB paradigm in the times to come. An equally important need is for the Government to provide a stable regulatory environment and adopt policies that will create and encourage more investment in mobile services and networks, lowering the costs of rollout and stimulating broadband adoption by the Indian masses

The chosen 3G technology should be mature, well tested and cost effective for deployment and roll out in order to ensure its success and adoption by the masses. And while there exist several technology options recommended by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA), the most mature of them is called Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) or High Speed Packet Access (HSPA).

As the world’s most widely deployed 3G technology - with undisputed advantage of time along with unmatched economies of scale - WCDMA/HSPA offers wireless broadband with comparative ease and with tremendous cost savings by leveraging pre-deployed infrastructure or investments that telecom operators have already made in the existing GSM technology. It lowers CAPEX and OPEX for operators, making 3G cost effective and services affordable. Lower costs will aid penetration and rapid service uptake in the country’s interiors. Some analysts have projected that 80% of nearly  two billion mobile broadband subscriptions globally will be served by HSPA networks by 2013.