Wireless Broadband to Exceed 2B Customers by 2015

(Top News, 31 Jul 2008)

Wireless broadband services will create significant opportunities for revenue growth, and cellular technologies will take the largest share, according to the latest report from Analysys Mason. Globally, 2.1 billion wireless broadband customers will generate $784 billion in service revenue by 2015. This revenue increase of about 2,400 percent will be underpinned by continued developments in wireless technologies, improvements in devices and more flexible pricing options.

HSPA will support 88 percent of all wireless broadband consumers at the end of 2008, and its importance will continue. "Despite the increasing availability of LTE and WiMAX, HSPA and HSPA+ will still support 54 percent of wireless broadband users by the end of 2015," according to Dr. Mark Heath, co-author of the report.

Developing regions will account for only 17 percent of wireless broadband customers at the end of 2008, but the lack of fixed-line infrastructure in these regions will bolster the growth of wireless broadband services, and developing regions will account for 57 percent of wireless broadband customers worldwide by the end of 2015.

Key findings of the new report include:
- Because W-CDMA to HSPA to HSPA+ is the natural evolution path for GSM operators, the number of HSPA and HSPA+ customers worldwide will increase from 61 million at the end of 2008 to 1.1 billion at the end of 2015.

- Cellular technologies will dominate wireless broadband services, with twenty times as many users as WiMAX by the end of 2015.

- LTE will take off relatively slowly, but its customer base will reach 440 million by 2015, with associated revenue of $194 billion.

- WiMAX will be squeezed from developed markets by fixed and cellular broadband services and by 2015 will serve just 98 million customers worldwide, of which 92 percent will be in developing regions.

WiMAX will fail to achieve a significant share of the rapidly developing wireless broadband market, contributing only 2 percent of global revenue. "By 2015, there will be twenty times as many customers for cellular broadband services as for WiMAX," says Dr. Alastair Brydon, co-author of the report. "The vast majority of MNOs will not break ranks to WiMAX, but will upgrade to LTE, resulting in over four times more LTE users by the end of 2015."

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