There will be 768,000 accumulated BWA/WIMAX subscribers in Brazil by 2010, of which two thirds will be WiMAX, according to the latest report from leading research firm Maravedis. The Brazilian players are anxiously awaiting the new 3.5 GHz auction to start sometime in July 2006, before federal elections due in October 2006. Bidders will want either to expand their current coverage areas or to enter the WiMAX arena. Moreover, positive regulatory changes in the 2.5 GHz band will open the WiMAX market starting 2007.
"Approximately 70% of those accumulated WiMAX subscribers will be residential mobile users, while fixed WiMAX will continue to be driven by large and SME customers," explained Eduardo Prado and Adlane Fellah, co-authors of the report.
Maravedis predicts that the most active players will be companies with deep pockets such as Telemar, Brazil Telecom, Embratel and Telefonica, who are thoroughly testing the technology and crafting their business plans.
"Overall, the total accumulated equipment market size for BWA/WiMAX in Brazil will represent a lucrative US$300 million by 2010, which makes Brazil a key market for BWA/WiMAX vendors for the years to come," Fellah added.
Maravedis' latest research also reveals that Brazil remains a very price sensitive market. Demand for broadband services is exploding, but both service providers and residential end-users demand very low cost CPE (in the US$100 range) before they will fully adopt WiMAX. So far, the demand for broadband wireless services has been mainly driven by high-end corporate and government users.
"Other important obstacles for massive WiMAX adoption include a rather restrictive regulation around mobility for WiMAX and the fact important market players we interviewed said that they prefer to await the mobile WiMAX version to become widely available before they commit to large network deployments," Prado commented."
Posted to the site on 30th March 2006
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/16744.php