ORR Technology, LLC

Broadband wireless standards spur subscriber growth

The broadband wireless access (BWA) industry has grown significantly in the last few years due to increased availability of spectrum for commercial services and the desire to close the digital divide. A major shift from the industry has been the migration towards standards-based products. A recent Fierce Broadband Wireless article provided data on WiMAX subscriber figures. The statistics, assembled by market research firm Maravedis, are worth examining in more detail to see the transformation taking shape.

Three of the five operators (Clearwire, Unwired, and Irish Broadband) use proprietary BWA equipment, one uses 802.16-2004 equipment (Iberbanda), and one has deployed 802.16e-2005 (KT). As standards-based networks dominate new network builds, the number of device vendors per network operator is also increasing. The vendors for the top five operators include: Alvarion, Cisco Systems, CMOTECH, LG Electronics, Motorola, MODACOM, Myungmin Systems, POSDATA, RAON Digital and Samsung.

More about operators investing in WiMAX is available at WiMax.com