Free Newsletter
Maravedis: WiMAX subscriber growth hit by recession
Research company Maravedis said WiMAX subscriber growth slowed in the first quarter as the global recession hurt both subscriber additions and ARPU from business users. WiMAX operators are also hitting barriers such as regulation, delayed spectrum auctions and deployment problems, noted Maravedis analyst Adlane Fellah.
"I think 2009 is going to be another tough year for WiMAX," Fellah said. "It's not declining, but it's not big growth yet."
Interestingly, Fellah said that WiMAX may play a critical role as a mobile data traffic offloader in the coming years as 3G operators experience a strain on their networks and WiMAX has a head start over LTE. He said that even some carriers deploying LTE may use some WiMAX cells to offload data traffic.
The Maravedis survey covered fixed and mobile WiMAX and pre-WiMAX systems. About half of the overall deployments are WiMAX. The number of subscriptions grew about 13 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared with about 30 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, according to Maravedis. Fellah said there were 3.5 million wireless broadband subscribers worldwide in the first quarter, about half of them using WiMAX, Fellah said.
For more:
- see Computerworld
Related articles:
Is WiMAX growth hurt by a lack of devices?
WiMAX deployments hit hard by economic downturn
Comments
Posted by WilliamC | July 17, 2009 - 9:49am
Once, Wimax is deployed in more cities and people see and get a feel of its benefits it should catch on. What is this big rush to get suscribers??? You have to build it right, test it, get necessary approvals and get spectrum. Who wants a service that does not work the way its suppose to??? It makes people think because there are not a lot of suscribers that Wimax is somehow flawed or a failure. This is far from the truth. Folks are going to marvel once the kinks are ironed out and see what this service can really do. I will wait patiently for Wimax to come to New York. Get ready for an internet like you have not seen before...Use your laptop in the car, on a boat or sitting in the park. The oppotunities seem endless.........
Posted by Steve Loebrich | July 17, 2009 - 10:16am
Granted the early part of 2009 was difficult for WiMAX vendors and the last part of 2008 was spent fulfilling a pipeline, there are huge opportunities for WiMAX going forward. Bottlenecks are starting to be freed up such as spectrum being allocated, vendor consolidation, and vendors exiting the business. However, one of the biggest drivers of WiMAX will be the various financial stimulus packages recently enacted by the U.S. Government. Even though the deployments funded by these stimulus dollars will solely be in the U.S., the additional revenue boost to the companies providing equipment and services will reenergize their efforts worldwide, drive costs down, and push interoperability. The latter part of 2009 and through 2010 will see strong growth because of these factors.
As for the migration to LTE...as operators begin to build WiMAX overlay networks for data offload, they should be looking to vendors that provide components that ease the transition and provide some level of investment protection as they migrate to LTE. Investing and leveraging common components/architecture in the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) between WiMAX and LTE will ease the transition, provide seamless customer migration, and offer lower OpEx/CapEx overall.
SHARE
WITH:
Comments (2) | Post a comment