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Why 700 MHz WiMAX is a Blockbuster
58 MHz x 300 million US population = 17.4 billion MHz/pops is US 700 MHz WiMAX Market
A recent article (http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_3956 ) reports on WiMAX Forum moves toward a 700 MHz FDD profile. This is welcome news in WiMAX land. I have commented in this blog before about the potential for a 700 MHz FDD WiMAX product in the US market. Let me put it in operator speak. When evaluating a market investors and operators use the term "MHz/pops" or the number of MHz in a license held by an operator multiplied by the population of the targeted (and licensed) geographic market based on the most recent government census. Numbers in the range of hundreds of million of "MHz/pop" is a good thing.
Lets use that 6th grade math to outline the US 700 MHz WiMAX market. The current 700 MHz auction is auctioning off 62 MHz of spectrum. However, 6 MHz of that ("E" block) is broadcast only, leaving us with 56 MHz. Another 10 MHz is intended as a public/private partnership for First Responder use and no bidder has come forward to make the minimum bid. This will be auctioned off eventually in a follow-up round, but for now lets exclude it for our conservative calculation. That leaves us with 46 MHz for commercial two-way, FDD use.
Some US operators (mostly rural telcos) are using 700 MHz spectrum obtained in the 2002 and 2003 700 MHz auctions where the old "C" block offers 12 MHz in an FDD profile. So our calculations should include that old "C" block and exclude the old "A" and "B" blocks which offer only a 2 x 1 MHz configuration. This leaves us with a highly simplified total of 58 MHz multiplied by an extrapolated US population of 300 million not necessarily based on the exact 2000 US census thus points to a 17.4 billion "MHz/pops" market in the US for 700 MHz FDD WiMAX. Ergo, a WiMAX vendor like Telsima who already offers a sub-GHz WiMAX product could be on the right track toward getting a chunk of that market share. Ditto for Redline and Airspan, which are nimble enough and have the channels to quickly move product into this market.
Oh, did I mention 90 MHz of AWS spectrum (also an FDD profile) times 300 million = 27 billion MHz/pops? Lets add 'em up to get 44.4 billion MHz/pops that could be served with an FDD WiMAX profile. This does not include a potential extra 20 MHz the FCC might free up for commercial use (another 6 billion MHz/pops). Either market (700 MHz or AWS) dwarfs any market that a Sprint-Clearwire partnership can build in the next year or two based on their mutual hodge-podge of 2.5 GHz spectrum across the country. You do the math…
Frank Ohrtman
WMX Systems, LLC
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