Worldwide BWA/WiMAX Subscriber Base Rises 19%

(Top News, 9 Oct 2008)

BWA/WiMAX subscribers worldwide reached 2.3 million in Q2 2008, up 19 percent over the first quarter and up 70 percent over Q2 2007, according to the WiMAXCounts Quarterly Report from Maravedis.

"Global service revenues continue to rise thanks to subscriber growth and despite the fact that ARPUs remain unchanged in the last quarter. However the average subscriber base per deployment remains very modest at 15,000 and contributes to the challenging lack of volumes facing the emerging device ecosystem. The launch of Xohm by Sprint-Clearwire represents the beginning of a tipping point for the industry," notes Adlane Fellah, CEO and founder of Maravedis.

Robert Syputa, partner, adds that the tipping points are more deeply felt than some suppose. As awareness deepens, confidence in WiMAX technology, and the disruptive incubator nature of the WIMAX business creation model, is growing.

"Mobile WiMAX does not need hundreds of deployments to be successful. It needs four to five champions with deep pockets per region to drive future volumes—something which is now quietly taking shape," says Fellah.

"We have seen an increasing interest from operators in mobile WiMAX," says Jeff Orr, co-author of the Quarterly Report. "We attribute the slow increase of proprietary deployed CPEs mainly to operators upgrading their networks to offer pure WiMAX, either in its fixed '16d' or mobile-capable '16e' versions."

THIS QUARTER'S SUMMARY FINDINGS:
- Q2 2008 BWA/WiMAX service revenue among WiMAXCounts operators totaled $426 million, as compared to $366 million during the previous quarter—an increase of over 21 percent. Maravedis expects total service revenues to double in 2008 compared to 2007.

- Residential subscribers are representing an increasingly larger proportion of the user mix at 67 percent and that is a condition for reaching large volumes.

- The largest mobile WiMAX deployments during Q2 2008 are from Korea Telecom, with nearly 190,000 subscribers, and Wateen Telecom (Pakistan) with more than 25,000 subscribers.

- The number of CPEs 802.16e-2005 installed increased 94 percent quarter-over-quarter, compared to a 21 percent quarterly increase for 802.16-2004 CPEs, and only a 4 percent increase for proprietary CPEs (most from Clearwire USA).

- Approximately 65 percent of the worldwide deployments occurred in the 3.5GHz spectrum, while only 16 percent in 2.5GHz.

- The average residential and business users ARPU remained stable in the last quarter.

- 64 percent of operators analyzed offer high-speed-internet (HSI); 50 percent of these also offer VoIP, nearly 20 percent offer IPTV + HSI + VoIP, and 26 percent offer VPN services.

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