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1.2 Fixed Broadband Wireless: Market Drivers and Applications (Continued)
T1 emulation for business: The other major opportunity for fixed WiMAX in developed markets is as a solution for competitive T1/E1, fractional T1/E1, or higher-speed services for the business market. Given that only a small fraction of commercial buildings worldwide have access to fiber, there is a clear need for alternative high-bandwidth solutions for enterprise customers. In the business market, there is demand for symmetrical T1/E1 services that cable and DSL have so far not met the technical requirements for. Traditional telco services continue to serve this demand with relatively little competition. Fixed broadband solutions using WiMAX could potentially compete in this market and trump landline solutions in terms of time to market, pricing, and dynamic provisioning of bandwidth.
Backhaul for Wi-Fi hotspots: Another interesting opportunity for WiMAX in the developed world is the potential to serve as the backhaul connection to the burgeoning Wi-Fi hotspots market. In the United States and other developed markets, a growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots are being deployed in public areas such as convention centers, hotels, airports, and coffee shops. The Wi-Fi hotspot deployments are expected to continue to grow in the coming years. Most Wi-Fi hotspot operators currently use wired broadband connections to connect the hotspots back to a network point of presence. WiMAX could serve as a faster and cheaper alternative to wired backhaul for these hotspots. Using the point-to-multipoint transmission capabilities of WiMAX to serve as backhaul links to hotspots could substantially improve the business case for Wi-Fi hotspots and provide further momentum for hotspot deployment. Similarly, WiMAX could serve as 3G (third-generation) cellular backhaul.
A potentially larger market for fixed broadband WiMAX exists outside the United States, particularly in urban and suburban locales in developing economies—China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil and several other countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa—that lack an installed base of wireline broadband networks. National governments that are eager to quickly catch up with developed countries without massive, expensive, and slow network rollouts could use WiMAX to leapfrog ahead. A number of these countries have seen sizable deployments of legacy WLL systems for voice and narrowband data. Vendors and carriers of these networks will find it easy to promote the value of WiMAX to support broadband data and voice in a fixed environment.
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