Mumbai: As an “interim measure,” Infotel Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd, the vehicle that will launch billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s dream project to offer broadband services across India, may opt for WiMax as the core technology and not LTE, two persons involved in the discussions said.

This is at a time when telecom operators in India are trying to choose between worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMax) and long-term evolution (LTE) as the core technology for offering wireless broadband services. Both technologies are backed by strong lobbies.

Intel Corp., which makes electronic chips for WiMax-enabled phones or laptops, has been backing WiMax, while Qualcomm Inc. that makes chips for LTE-enabled devices, has been betting on LTE.

In India, where broadband penetration is less than 1% and the subscriber base is a mere nine million, a service provider’s choice of technology means mass market opportunities for such companies.

After Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) acquired a 95% stake in Infotel for Rs4,800 crore, it was expected the company would tilt towards LTE, a promising technology that’s still evolving.

A spokesperson for RIL declined to comment on Mint’s queries.

However, at an analyst conference, a senior RIL official had given a sense of how the company would place its orders, a move that is being watched by rivals as well as global hardware suppliers.

“We will adopt a technology, which can alternate between WiMax to LTE,” the official told analysts at a conference, a day after the company swept rival bids and won a government organized auction for spectrum for broadband wireless access in 22 circles.

One of the contenders wooing Infotel is South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. A week after Infotel won the bids, Samsung sent a senior official from South Korea to renew old connections at RIL.

The official is said to have worked with the old team— Manoj Modi and Jyotindra Thacker at Reliance Infocomm Ltd—before the business moved into the Anil Ambani fold and was renamed Reliance Communications Ltd.

Samsung, one of the leading vendors at that time, supplied the first CDMA handsets along with LG when the company launched mobile operations in India.