Reading through this, I have a feeling this may prove to be another leapfrog in communication tech in the developing world. Look at India - India gave out wireless broadband spectrum earlier this year. The spectrum was much cheaper than mobile 3G spectrum. And, the only national winner looks like they made a very smart move.
The winner has announced that they'll deploy LTE. And they now have linkages to all the parts needed for this puzzle.
The winner now belongs to RIL - with billions of dollars in annual free cashflow from oil & gas business, decades of reputation in capital intensive projects ahead of schedule at lower costs that anybody else, and the experience of launching a successful national telecom business from scratch (called RCom now, belongs to a differnt part of the family). Newsflow suggests an attempt at triple play - data, TV, Voice and video telephony - in collaboration with RCom's existing mobile and optical fiber infrastructure. Interestingly, RCom's group companies are large players in the media business - from film and tv content production and distribution, to radio and internet media.
The cable TV industry is in a mess in India - stuck in old analog technology and used to mafia-like territorial disputes on the ground. Existing broadband options are relatively slow and expensive. The mobile telcos do not have the money, bandwidth or infra to do mobile wireless TV successfully. And, from here, the Indian market directly to relatively cheap high-speed 4G networks with live TV and other media streaming options. Not very different from what happened in the last 10 years - the country went from old copper wireline tech to one of the largest mobile telco markets in the world. This time, it may be faster!