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Recession is slowing WiMax growth
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 16 July 2009, 19:33 IST |
1 Comments
Bangalore: Recession has slowed down the WiMax subscriber additions and average monthly revenue. A survey by Maravedis research firm reveals that the average subscriber growth for the emerging wireless technology slowed in the first quarter, and it will continue to struggle through this year, reports IDG.
According to Maravedis Analyst, Adlane Fellah, WiMax operators are facing increasing problems like regulation, delayed allocation of spectrum and their own deployment problems. "I think 2009 is going to be another tough year for WiMax. It's not declining, but it's not big growth yet," said Fellah.
However on a more positive side, WiMax may have a crucial role to play as mobile data traffic rapidly grows in the coming years and potentially strains existing 3G networks. Even carriers that plan eventually to deploy LTE (Long-Term Evolution) may use some WiMax cells to offload data from 3G networks that also have to carry voice.
Fixed and mobile WiMax, as well as proprietary technologies that preceded the standards-based system were covered in the survey. Subscriptions grew by about 13 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared to 30 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. Approximately 3.5 million wireless broadband subscribers were there worldwide in the first quarter, about half of them using WiMax and about 400,000 more people signed up for wireless broadband service in the quarter. Still, the number of subscribers was up 70 percent from a year earlier.
Consumer revenue rose from the equivalent of $42.33 to $42.43, while business users on average paid $116.82, down from $122.64. Fellah points out that the advent of new competition in telecom markets (in this case, WiMax vendors) tends to drive down broadband rates.
In other countries WiMax faces other challenges like subscriptions in South Korea to WiBro, the local version of WiMax; fell last year before the government allowed VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) on the network. An auction of radio spectrum for WiMax in India was delayed, and carriers are still uncertain what spectrum will be available in Russia.
All this matters, because chip and device manufacturers need some assurance that people want to use WiMax before they put it in their products.
However Fellah also adds that the votes on WiMax versus LTE (Long-Term Evolution) aren't in yet from many cellular operators in developing countries, which could make up a big part of the global market. Carriers considering LTE are worried about technological delays, interoperability among vendors and spectrum availability.
There are much larger spectrum bands available for WiMax than for 3G in most countries, and spectrum for LTE won't even be allocated until 2011 in some areas, such as Europe, said Fellah.
