Wireless broadband growth, Wimax squeezed

Wireless broadband is the next big opportunity for mobile phone operators, according to a report from telecoms and IT specialist Analysys Mason.

A boom in the up take of wireless broadband services over the next few years could result in as many as 2.1 billion wireless broadband customers generating $784bn in service revenues by 2015.

According to the report, HSPA wireless access technology will support 88% 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% of wireless broadband users by the end of 2015,” said Dr Mark Heath, co-author of the report.

Developing regions will account for only 17% 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% of wireless broadband customers worldwide by the end of 2015.

It is predicted that 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.

The report believes that the mobile phone will be the big winner and 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 $194bn,” said the report.

“Wimax will fail to achieve a significant share of the rapidly developing wireless broadband market, contributing only 2% of global revenue,” concluded the report.