Bright future awaits WiMAX: Study
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 23:39 IST
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Bright future awaits WiMAX: Study
Bangalore: Despite all the challenges, a bright future awaits WiMAX in the future. Two-thirds of the service providers intend to use WiMAX for mobility-based services by 2012, finds market research firm Infonetics Research in its 'WiMAX Services Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey'. The research firm surveyed purchase decision-makers at 25 WiMAX (News - Alert)-only operators, fixed-line incumbents, competitive fixed-line providers, and mobile operators in order to get a strategic overview of WIMAX operators. The survey result provides information about how and why WiMAX networks are being deployed, the business model that is being adopted, what kind of markets are targeted, and projection of subscriber and revenue numbers between 2010-2012. Highlights of select WIMAX strategies revealed that currently fixed or nomadic basic broadband services dominated the market, but service providers were expected to offer diversified services by 2012. Wireless DSL solution appeared to be globally popular in most regions and even in developed countries such as the U.S., opportunities and potential for WIMAX seem to be rather positive. At least 64 percent of service provider respondents were expected to offer full mobility by 2012 and this represented an increase from the 24 percent Infonetics survey. The period is expected to be dominated by smartphones, with USB dongles dominating the nomadic mobile services initially. Surprisingly, the top commercial challenges would include WIMAX enabled mobile devices, marketing and positioning of its services, building retail and distribution channels, and providing SLAs for enterprise customers and defining a pricing model for a low ARPU market. All this indicates that the WIMAX industry is geared up for a richer service environment in the future in spite of the challenges it faces in terms of range limitations and difficulty in building low -ARPU models for developing countries. Richard Webb, Directing Analyst for WIMAX, microwave, and mobile devices, Infonetics research said that WIMAX would have to address all the challenges if it is to live to its full potential of a future long-term broadband technology.

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