May 2 2004

The US market for broadband wireless access services based on technologies such as WiMAX will be worth US$3.7 billion by 2009.

A new study from BWCS and Senza-Fili Consulting estimates that fixed wireless services will account for 3.6 per cent of all broadband connections in the US by the same date. And according to the author of WiFi, WiMAX and 802.20: The Disruptive Potential of Wireless Broadband WiMAX looks set to dominate the BWA market.

Report author Monica Paolini said: “Over the last few months we have seen a growing number of vendors and service providers throwing their weight behind WiMAX as the leading standard for broadband wireless access. Navini’s decision to join the WiMAX Forum after being a long-time supporter of the rival 802.20 standard confirms the growing industry support for WiMAX.”

Largely thanks to strong backing from Intel, WiMAX has rapidly emerged as the front-runner from the raft of new generation BWA technologies. Although handful of pre-WiMAX proprietary technologies are already being commercially deployed by service providers in the US, Asia-Pacific and Europe, the BWCS/Senza-Fili study concludes that only a standards-based approach will bring BWA to the masses.

Paolini argues: “Until now BWA has failed to achieve widespread adoption due to a lack of convergence of vendors towards a single standard. As we have seen with WiFi, standards help to drive down hardware costs and promote interoperability among manufacturers.”

Cost and usability will be critical factors in the highly competitive US market if emerging BWA services are to provide a realistic alternative to competing fixed broadband (DSL and cable) services. Established BWA services based on LMDS, MMDS and satellite have so far failed to do this. According to market data from the Federal Communications Commission between 2000 and mid-2003 BWA and satellite share of the broadband market declined from 1.59 per cent to 1.32 per cent.

Despite the growing support for WiMAX, WiFi, WiMAX and 802.20: The Disruptive Potential of Wireless Broadband concludes that mass adoption of broadband wireless access won’t gain momentum until 2007. The next few years will largely see small-scale trials and proof-of-concept technology pilots for fixed broadband access. Initial deployments will address the fixed access market, as WiMAX PCMCIA cards or WiMAX-enabled laptops are unlikely to ship until 2007/8. The ratification of 802.16 Rev E will pave the way for support of mobile access, but it is still too early to know whether WiMAX will be able to dominate the mobile market, where solutions like Flarion’s and IPWireless are already commercially available.

Paolini said: “The downside to a standards-based approach is that the process of definition, ratification and product certification is time-consuming. In the meantime service providers must either wait or adopt competing technologies”. A good example of this is Nextel’s recent announcement of an initial commercial deployment of Flarion’s FLASH-OFDM solution. Paolini continues: “Nextel was under pressure to deploy broadband wireless data services and Flarion had a solution already available, while 802.16 Rev E still needs to be ratified.”