WiMax may be battling to gain a significant part of the Australian market for high-speed wireless Internet access, a new five-year forecast from IDC suggests. The report says mobile broadband offerings have taken a “substantial lead”, offering “superior coverage and high speeds at competitive access costs.
WiMax may be battling to gain a significant part of the Australian market for high-speed wireless Internet access, a new five-year forecast from IDC suggests. The report says mobile broadband offerings have taken a “substantial lead”, offering “superior coverage and high speeds at competitive access costs.<\/P>
“WiMax broadband offerings must rapidly respond to these value propositions by the end of the decade or face relegation,” says analyst Jerson Rau, who prepared the report, titled Australia Mobile and Wireless Broadband
2007-2011 Forecast and Analysis: Future Proof.<\/P>
Yau told CDN the report did not suggest the outlook was necessarily bleak for the government-subsidised Opel (Optus-Elders) $958 million project to build a $1.9 billion WiMax and ADSL2+ broadband network in Australia’s regional areas. The IDC report had largely been completed before the Government awarded the Broadband Connect deal to Opel, he said.<\/P>
However Yau believes other would-be WiMax operators, who include Unwired and Austar, are suffering by the long delays in rolling out the new technology, and have yet to develop a clear roadmap, while 3G mobile operators have experienced rapid rollouts and takeup, and have a very clear roadmap.<\/P>
“Mobile broadband offerings have taken a substantial lead in the Australian mobility broadband market with superior coverage and high speeds at competitive access costs. WiMax broadband offerings must rapidly respond to these value propositions by the end of the decade – or face relegation,” he said.<\/P>
In 2006 IDC says the Australian mobile broadband (MBB) market topped 287,000 subscribers, contributing A$115.7 million in service revenues. The wireless broadband (WBB) market had 125,300 subscribers who generated A$100.3 million in service revenues.<\/P>
It predicts that up to 2011, MBB subscribers will outnumber WBB subscribers “by a healthy margin due to the high-tempo developments on the mobile platform owing to the 3.5G upgrade roadmap.”<\/P>
IDC recommends that both MBB and WBB service providers should “increasingly attack the greater broadband market with highly competitive pricing aligned with business and consumer expectations. These stakeholders should consider a heightened state of market aggressiveness against fixed-line broadband and upcoming municipal Wi-Fi services if they hope to outplay their competitors.”<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WiMax may be battling to gain a significant part of the Australian market for high-speed wireless Internet access, a new five-year forecast from IDC suggests. The report says mobile broadband offerings have taken a “substantial lead”, offering “superior coverage and high speeds at competitive access costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-archive","category-internet","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"yoast_head":"\n