MONTREAL – Research firm Maravedis reports in its latest WiMAXCounts Quarterly Report that the global BWA/WiMAX subscriber base increased by 350,000 in the fourth quarter of 2007, reaching a total of 1,728,000 subscribers.
But Maravedis founder and CEO Adlane Fellah said that “even with an increase of more than 20% in WiMAX subscribers in the last quarter of 2007, operators are still waiting for the tipping point that will lead to acceleration of WiMAX adoption and deployments.”
“The key factors mainly centre on certification of mobile WiMAX equipment, a reduction in CPE pricing and the emergence of a device ecosystem,” Fellah said in a statement.
“Many operators are holding back their network expansion pending the mobile WiMAX 802.16e equipment certification, which was postponed to the second half of 2008. Mobile WiMAX is a key enabler of a wider range of value-added services and product flexibility,” said Cintia Garza, co-author of the WiMAXCounts Quarterly Report.
“We are already seeing these tipping points in India, Pakistan, Africa, and we expect other emerging, heavily populated regions to be spurred by lower device pricing, which in turn will drive equipment volume ramp-up during 2009-2010,” said Robert Syputa, Maravedis Partner and Senior Analyst.
Maravedis is a research and analysis firm focusing on BWA technologies including WiMAX, LTE, 802.20 and Ultra Mobile Broadband, and Wireless Local Loop.
www.maravedis-bwa.com
