15-Feb-2011
BARCELONA – February 15, 2011 – The WiMAX Forum announced that WiMAX service providers around the globe today have networks covering more than 823 million people (or POPs) in approximately 149 countries and are on track to reach one billion POPs by the end of 2011. This estimate is a growth of 215 million POPs since December 2009 and surpasses the forecasted growth during that time period.
“WiMAX networks continued to grow at a steady pace, despite a slow global economic recovery and competitive technologies starting to enter the market,” said Ron Resnick, president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum. “In 2010, the WiMAX Forum and the worldwide ecosystem continued its diligent work to deliver an evolutionary path from WiMAX Release 1 to WiMAX Release 2, based upon IEEE 802.16m, to help safeguard operators’ network investment for future upgrades.”
Regional growth varied based on several factors including the local economy, existing mobile infrastructure and spectrum availability. The strongest growth occurred in the United States through Clearwire’s network expansion and in the Asia-Pacific region, specifically Japan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.
In 2010 the WiMAX Forum continued to see stable growth in Eastern Europe. Some CIS counties doubled their population coverage, and operators across the region are expected to expand WiMAX coverage to new population centers over the next year. The Latin America market saw slow growth due to ongoing spectrum auction delays.
By region, WiMAX Forum research uncovered the following growth:
India saw slow WiMAX growth throughout 2010 due to delays in network rollouts. However, over the next year, the WiMAX Forum expects to see strong network growth in India. BSNL has committed to deploy 20,000 base stations over the next 36 months through the use of regional franchisees. BSNL has established multiple contracted revenue sharing franchisees for urban roll out and service delivery across India. On February 22-23 of 2011, WiMAX Forum and BSNL are jointly hosting the WiMAX Network Deployment Workshop in New Delhi, an interactive event for BSNL’s Franchisees to gain a concrete understanding of the necessary steps involved in deploying a Greenfield WiMAX network.
About the WiMAX Forum®
The WiMAX Forum® is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization that certifies and promotes the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the IEEE 802.16. A WiMAX Forum goal is to accelerate the introduction of these systems into the marketplace. WiMAX Forum Certified products are interoperable and support broadband fixed, nomadic, portable and mobile services.
Along these lines, the WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements. Through the WiMAX Forum Congress Events Series of global trade shows and events, the WiMAX Forum is committed to furthering education, training and collaboration to expand the reach of the WiMAX ecosystem. For more information, visit the trade show link at www.wimaxforum.org.
"WiMAX Forum," the WiMAX Forum logo and the WiMAX Forum Certified logo are registered trademarks of the WiMAX Forum. "WiMAX," "Mobile WiMAX," "Fixed WiMAX," "WiMAX Certified," and "WiMAX Forum Certified" are trademarks of the WiMAX Forum. Third-party trademarks contained in this document are the property of their respective owners.
