Mobile Wimax: the future or a dead end?

Dylan Bushell-Embling
23 Apr 2010
00:00

One example is Pakistan's Wateen Telecom, which has deployed fixed Wimax in the 2.5-GHz band.

Garza said mobile Wimax will definitely be the dominant technology going forward, in both Asia and worldwide. "The trend is toward mobility," she said.

Indeed, despite fixed Wimax's global lead in terms of deployments, mobile Wimax has caught up by users. In Q3 2009, the number of mobile Wimax subscribers overtook fixed Wimax subscribers for the first time, with 1.45 million compared to 1.3 million customers, according to Maravedis' 4GCounts database.

Mobile Wimax is also growing at a far faster rate - over the same quarter, subscribers grew by 47%, compared to just 13% for fixed Wimax.

That said, Garza believes that India and Indonesia will be two countries crucial to the proliferation of Wimax. But Indonesian regulators do not allow mobile Wimax services, and India has also settled on fixed Wimax.

Vendors agree that despite some hitches, Asia is a strong market. "Asia represents a growth opportunity for Wimax," Alvarion VP of marketing Ashish Sharma said. "We expect Wimax to play a major role in building the next-generation broadband infrastructure in the region."

Alvarion has so far won Wimax equipment supply contracts from Asian operators, including Taiwan's VMAX and Chunghwa Telecom and India's Aircel and Bharti Airtel.

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