WiMAX to dominate?
Rick Rogers, Director, Alvarion, says that more and more people are demanding high-speed Internet services.
“Deploying wireline access networks such as DSL or Cable Modem involves relatively high investment costs and results in limited or insufficient coverage by wireline infrastructures with limited capacity,” says Rogers.
“This is leading the search for an alternative solution and more specifically the proliferation of broadband wireless access networks. The WiMAX market in particular, is rapidly growing as a cost effective wireless access solution.”
WiMAX is targeting two markets: primary broadband services and personal broadband, Rogers says. The primary broadband and voice services market targets rural/remote areas in both the developing world and developed areas.
For rural/remote areas, considered less economical by providers to offer broadband and voice services, WiMAX offers an excellent solution to bridge the digital divide. For developed areas, WiMAX offers an alternative to DSL, allowing operators to ultimately offer fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) of networks and services.
For the Personal Broadband market, WiMAX is targeting more densely-populated areas such as metro centres and suburbs, providing the opportunity to mobilise broadband connections by offering a DSL-on-the-go service, complete with mobility, handover and roaming services.
“In emerging markets, the lack of a developed communications infrastructure is dramatically reducing the ability of achieving or strengthening economic development, improving social well being and enhancing personal communications. With broadband access services, local populations may be empowered with communication capabilities which provide the information to strengthen social, economical, educational, and health trends. In the emerging markets, where little infrastructure is available yet economies are growing, WiMAX based communications networks can promote equal opportunity communications.”
Rogers argues that WiMAX represents a low-risk, attractive opportunity in the fixed/portable broadband market, and especially in emerging markets. “In the mobile broadband market, the opportunity is expected to be much larger, allowing entry of new challengers into the mobile broadband arena and enabling a shift towards multiple devices per subscriber permitting operators to move beyond the one-subscriber, one-ARPU, one-device model.”
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