Our friends over at Maravedis, who among other things count the number of WiMAX subscribers around the planet, said this week that the recession is having a dire effect on the new wireless technology.
The researcher reckons that WiMAX subscribers worldwide reached 2.68 million in Q3 2008 just 13% higher than in the first quarter of the year, although this was a 91% rise over the same quarter in 2007.
But service revenue growth is definitely losing pace as WiMAX operators find they cannot raise their ARPU during the recession and in some cases, such as WiBro in Korea, ARPU has gone into a decline. Maravedis says that the economic downturn is accelerating the shift in consumer spending towards flat rates for broadband wireless and replacement of landline services.
‘These are very difficult times for mobile WiMAX as both vendors such as Telsima and leading WiMAX operators such as Tata are struggling to fund their WiMAX plans noted Adlane Fellah,’ CEO and Founder of Maravedis. ‘Further, in the PR battle, mobile WiMAX has been losing momentum in favor of LTE as it becomes clear that LTE will become the dominant 4G technology among Tier 1 mobile operators worldwide,’ he added.
The picture is not all bleak the researcher says, due to more devices being certified during the quarter, and because the growth rate for base station deployments is outpacing subscriber modules, which means that companies are still building networks.
The company says that WiMAX is entering its first phases of commercial availability so new applications such as machine to machine, utility monitoring, metro-wide mobile broadband and embedded consumer applications are only now starting to become feasible. These are all areas tipped for widespread WiMAX usage.
As a result the forecast for future WiMAX subscribers is being cut and the average subscribers per deployment are modest at 15,000. It is this which currently contributes to the lack of volumes.
Clearwire in the US continues to be the top operator in subscriber numbers with 469,000 subscribers, but this was only up by 1.5% over subscribers reported in Q2, although the report points out that the launch of the Clear service by Clearwire is still in its infancy. WiMAX operators are installing at a steady rate of 64% residential customers and 36% business.
WiMAX service revenues came to $492 million, for the quarter up 15% from quarter 2 and a total of 121,269 base station sectors were deployed as of Q3 2008, a 37% increase from the previous quarter.