New analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that although the Asia Pacific region can boast of 43 million WiMax subscribers by the end of 2013 and generate estimated revenues of close to US$11 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 45 per cent, Australia will only make up two per cent of the Asia Pacific region’s WiMax.
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The report titled ‘The Asia Pacific WiMax Opportunity’, finds that WiMax holds promising potential as an alternative technology to connect underserved rural areas that will never realistically receive fixed-line services.
The sweet spot for WiMax, says Frost & Sullivan, is its ability to provide voice and data connectivity at speeds of up to 1Mbps in Asia’s emerging markets where such digital divide exists.
This massive untapped segment is expected to drive WiMax deployments in the Asia-Pacific, despite competition from 3G technology and the regulatory issues in some countries, according to the research firm.
Australia’s prospects for WiMax recently received a major blow with the cancellation of a US$958million subsidy for a national broadband plan, which was offered by the Australian Communications Authority (ACA), to the OPEL consortium made up of Optus and Elders.
At the same time, Australia’s wired broadband network has made leaps and bounds in the past two years as ADSL2+ rollouts have both significantly expanded coverage and service and quality. Telstra has one of the fastest 3G networks in the world up and running and has no plans to adopt WiMax in the near future. However, high broadband pricing and capacity constraints might still create a niche for some lower-end users but given that 77 per cent of the country’s households already have broadband service, the report finds fairly limited demand for the service in Australia.
The emerging markets are expected to account for nearly 80 per cent (or 34.4 million) of the total subscribers in 2013, collectively contributing 69 per cent (or US$7.59 billion) to the region’s total WiMax revenues given their low average revenue per user nature.
As at end-2007, Asia’s household broadband penetration stood at 3.4 percent. This translates to nearly 3.7 billion people in the region who have yet to adopt broadband access services – a figure significantly higher than the world’s entire mobile subscriber base. Asia-Pacific, as such, remains the best test-bed for WiMax in terms of subscriber uptake and network deployments.
WiMax adoption to-date however has been lukewarm and it still faces a number of challenges ranging from regulatory issues to weak operator support to high CPE (customer premise equipment) prices.
Of the 17 Asian countries in the study that were ranked for regulatory support and operator willingness to deploy the technology, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India topped the list due to excellent incumbent support, favourable regulatory regimes, and considerable untapped growth.
