Analogue radio could soon be made obsolete in India, thanks to a new start-up, Procall, which is launching Motorola's IDEN technology in the country.

Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (IDEN) is Motorola’s proprietary two-way radio technology, based on Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). Unlike existing analogue systems, which have a range of just 40km from the centralised microwave transmission tower, IDEN has a centralised switch connected to cell sites to provide an unlimited range. The technology falls under 2.5 generation services (2.5G) as it can carry both voice and data.

IDEN was originally launched in the US way back in 1994. Since then, it has broadened its reach to 27 countries, with a total subscriber base of 30 million. A single US company, Nexttel, accounts for 20 million of these. Procall is the first company to launch the technology in India.

The wireless communication products provider has started with the Karnataka area, and has been awrded licences to operate in six more – Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. It is also eyeing nine other undisclosed areas.

Chief marketing officer of Procall, Alok Divatia, said digital two-way radio would take over from analogue completely in the long run. He added that the target markets were various vertical industry operations such as fleet management, manufacturing and sales force management.

Divatia added that major organisations, including Wipro, Genpact and Yahoo, were already using IDEN. He said he was confident of achieving a subscriber base of 1.5 million across India over the next few years. X