Parks Associates senior analyst Michael Cai's recent report on fixed broadband wireless technology may offer a more realistic view of the future than that painted by some vendors: He studied developed and developing countries around the globe and while he found that each region is on a slightly different path, he doesn't expect to see volume commercial deployments of WiMax until 2006. Those deployments will be mainly in Europe and Asia.
That timeframe is slightly behind the second half of 2005 timeframe that the WiMax Forum and some vendors are hoping for. While the standardization process is on schedule, the processes for certification and interoperability are likely to slow down progress. "Who knows where conflicts emerge as they go down the process," Cai said. Even if commercial products come out in the second half of 2005 on schedule, carriers will likely want to test products for three to six months before rolling out a commercial network, he said.
Cai doesn't expect large scale demand for WiMax networks in the United States until 2008 or 2009, though he cautions that there are so many uncertainties here that it's difficult to predict. The deployment of WiMax here may depend on changes the FCC may make to its spectrum policy for the 2.5 Ghz bands.
But in the meantime, Cai expects existing wireless ISPs to migrate to WiMax using the unlicensed bands. "All they care about is cost," he said. Such operators don't have the resources to test equipment or support trials so they're interested in standards-based products that essentially guarantee good performance.
Cai also has some interesting theories on which areas of the world will have the most WiMax users in the near future. While many observers suggest that the developing nations that don't yet have strong telecom infrastructure will make up the largest markets for WiMax, Cai says that developed markets will at least initially account for the highest number of subscribers. "Even if [WiMax reaches] 20 percent of the underserved market in the U.S., that's way larger than the total market in a lot of developing markets," he said. He believes that over the next few years, most of the developing countries will continue to lack demand, lack PC penetration, and lack the disposable income to support WiMax. "At least until 2009, we'll probably have more WiMax subscribers in the underserved markets in the developed countries compared to emerging markets in developing countries," he said.