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BWA market surpasses the 2 million mark
Industry operators demonstrate progress over first three months this year.
The broadband wireless access (BWA) market was rapidly approaching the two million subscriber mark at the end of March 2008, according to market research firm Maravedis. Subscribers to broadband wireless services grew over 260,000 during the first three months of the year, which would have seen the 2 million mark surpassed during the first week of April. The online service tracks BWA and WiMAX operators.
U.S. wireless ISP Clearwire remains the largest provider of BWA services in the world with 433,000 subscribers. 802.16-based WiMAX radios are not part of Clearwire's commercial offering yet, so the figure reflects only the use of proprietary Motorola equipment. Commercially available services make up the majority of BWA and WiMAX networks (planned launches, trials and idle spectrum are the other categories). About 75% of those networks use 802.16 standards, while the balance utilizes proprietary equipment.
The quarterly summary also found that ~50% of operators only offer high-speed Internet services, while the balance offer multiple services including voice over IP (VoIP), streaming video, or secure virtual private network (VPN) access in addition to Internet. Maravedis predicts that service bundles of two or three key elements will become standard in the next two years.
When reading these reports and predictions, it's important to watch the language used by the researchers. Interchanging terms, such as subscriber and user, can have a dramatic difference in published figures. Subscribers are typically billable locations that can be audited by a service provider. In contrast, 'users' could represent multiple family members who have access to a home broadband connection or the tens to hundreds of colleagues using a single office broadband connection.
Disclosure: The author is an independent consultant and market analyst. He has authored research for Maravedis among others.
By Jeff Orr
ORR Technology, LLC
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