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Mobile WiMAX: BRIC works? |
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Monday, 07 July 2008 |
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Broadband wireless technology to fly in emerging nations…
Mobile WiMAX may not succeed in mature mobile broadband markets, but it will have a future in BRIC (
Brazil , Russia India and
China ) countries, especially in
India according to a new analysis made by Cantab Wireless.
The analysis, ‘Mobile WiMAX – Technical Aspects, Commercial Prospects, and Competition’, suggests that mobile WiMAX cannot fulfill all the expectations placed upon it. While Cantab acknowledges that it is a powerful technology with many excellent qualities, the analysis also notes that the technology has some serious limitations. According to the research company the biggest challenge for mobile WiMAX is that it is competing against 3G cellular networks in mature telecommunications markets. Cantab also suggests that mobile WiMAX - performance-wise – cannot provide a shortcut to the 4th generation of mobile telecoms as some of its promoters have claimed. Cantab reckons that mobile WiMAX performance is comparable to 3.5G cellular systems at best, and in some areas it lags behind its cellular competitors. More importantly, 3.5G has already been rolled out, operating in numerous cellular networks, whereas mobile WiMAX is yet to become operational in a grand scale in developed markets.
In the BRIC countries the situation is somewhat different. Typically, says Cantab, the lack of cellular broadband services (for example, 3G) in a country implies that there is no market for those services to date. Thus, mobile WiMAX has the opportunity to make its break in countries which do not have mobile broadband yet but which are developing fast economically, and the BRIC countries fit the bill quite well.
India , in particular, is a promising market for mobile WiMAX, with the possibility in the best case scenario of 40mn users by 2013. Moreover, reasons Cantab, fixed WiMAX is already widely used as a cable replacement technology in many developing countries such as
Pakistan and
India , which provides a good starting point in terms of mobile WiMAX deployment.
To an extent agreeing with Cantab’s reading of the mobile WiMAX runes is Springboard Research’s new report ‘Laying the Foundation: WiMAX in Asia/Pacific 2008’. This document predicts that WiMAX service revenues in Asia Pacific will surge to US$5.5bn by 2012, and that India and Japan (followed by Pakistan and China) will be the largest WiMAX markets in the region in that year. Springboard also calculates that mobile WiMAX services will garner a significant majority of revenues and subscribers compared to fixed WiMAX services during the forecast period.
John Williamson |
