MONTREAL – Approximately 400,000 BWA/WiMAX subscribers were added in the first quarter of 2009, bringing the worldwide total to 3.5 million, according to a new report by Maravedis.
The Montreal-based telecom research firm also found that the average BWA/WiMAX subscriber growth rate slowed to 13% from the fourth quarter in 2008, though still saw a 75% year-over-year growth rate since Q1 2008.
“Global service revenue growth is tapering off as WiMAX operators experience ARPU stagnation and subscriber growth slow down,” said Maravedis CEO and founder Adlane Fellah, in the press release announcing the report.
The quarterly report also noted that 50 million new active 3G subscribers were added in the first quarter of this year, and examines the motivations for 3G operators to invest in LTE, and what challenges they could face when adopting this technology.
“Our research reveals that 37% of operators consider LTE as their best option available today to address the need for higher bandwidth services and capacity, while 15% believe LTE will give them added flexibility to use different spectrum bands,” said report co-author Basharat Ashai, in the release.
The report also found that:
– The top 30 mobile operators committed to LTE accounted in Q1 2009 for 1.1 billion mobile subscribers, of which 447 million correspond to China Mobile. Many of these subscribers are served with GSM, 3G or HSPA technologies and will be migrated to LTE in the future;
– 28% of operators said technological delays were the main challenge for adopting LTE; 24% revealed that interoperability between the LTE vendors is a concern; and 10% pointed to the lack of spectrum/delayed auctions as a challenge;
– Q1 2009 recorded WiMAX ARPU was US$42.43 and US$116.82 for residential and business segments respectively, compared to US$42.33 and US$122.64 for the same segments in Q4 2008;
– Clearwire USA continues to be the top BWA/WIMAX operator in terms of the number of subscribers. The operator had 500,000 subscribers at the end of Q1 2009, an increase of 5% compared with 475,000 reported in Q4 2008.
