Having previously announced that the company will spend 4,000 crore Rupees (US$946.9 million; US$1=42.3 Rupees) on building a WiMAX network, Indian telecom operator BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) recently increased the scale of its WiMAX investment to 5,000 crore Rupees (US$1.2 billion), in a bid to speed up the nationwide rollout of commercial WiMAX service in 2009, the Business Standard of India reported.

According to BSNL's plan, the initial WiMAX rollout in urban India will cover the three states of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra excluding Mumbai. Furthermore, the company will invest 530 crore Rupees (US$125.3 million) during 2009 to improve its rural WiMAX infrastructure in West Bengal by doubling its cell sites from 1600 at present. BSNL expects to deliver WiMAX service in rural India by 2009.

So far, the schedule for WiMAX commercialization has been delayed as spectrum allocation is still pending approval by the DoT (Department of Telecommunications) of India.