Africa, once labelled a “technological desert” in terms of adoption and development, is catching up with the rest of the world.
The WiMax Forum revealed this week that WiMax service providers in the Africa and Middle East region now offer networks covering more than 108 million people with 142 network deployments. This is more than North American coverage, which has increased to 47 million people with 51 network deployments.
According to the forum, WiMax service providers in approximately 147 countries now offer services to networks covering more than 620 million people, and are on pace to surpass the already forecasted 800 million people by the end of 2010.
It adds that current WiMax network deployments reach 555 networks in these 147 countries. Asia-Pacific leads the way with more than 237 million people and 100 network deployments, followed by Central/Latin America, which reached 113 million people and 109 deployments. Europe covers 115 million people, with 153 deployments, says the forum.
Ron Resnick, WiMax Forum president and chairman, says: “WiMax networks continue to expand at a very healthy pace, despite challenges from the slowly recovering global economy.”
These new deployment numbers and population statistics show the WiMax ecosystem has strong momentum at the start of the new year, says Resnick, and predicts it will continue to meet global market demand for high-speed broadband access in developed and emerging regions.
Keeping pace
WiMax's increasing popularity globally is matched by its momentum in developing countries, which are currently struggling to gain wireless Internet capabilities, he says.
However, Levy adds that poor infrastructure, insufficient resources, lack of knowledge, and financial instability are major problems facing developing countries.
“WiMax has proven to be the best means of providing wireless Internet at broadband speeds - and looking ahead at the ways in which WiMax will benefit additional countries in the future is a hopeful and exciting prospect,” he points out.
“With a maturing vendor ecosystem and networks beginning to ramp, we should expect to see a variety of WiMax-enabled devices in 2010”, says Levy.
Tech drivers
The forum says the main driver of WiMax growth in 2010 will be the increase in consumer products coming to market, including tri-band smartphones and feature phones capable of global roaming.
The quality of openness in WiMax networks clearly aids the introduction of such applications over the next-generation infrastructure, says Frost & Sullivan. The firm contends that openness is a crucial aspect of WiMax because such a dynamic ecosystem necessitates high levels of openness in facilitating the merger of business models, introduction of new applications, and entry of new equipment vendors.
According to Frost & Sullivan Technical Insights analyst, Arun Nirmal, the industry anticipates data-driven applications and higher traffic volumes will be the main drivers for the mobile and wireless industries in the coming years.
“The recent open source platforms in the Android mobile promoted by Google marks a significant step in the path toward adopting new applications,” says Nirmal.
The WiMax Forum expects this number to surpass one billion by the end of 2011, which is approximately the time competitive 4G technologies are expected to begin early commercialisation.
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