WiMAX subscriptions in MEA expected to touch 4.45m by 2012

Dubai: Subscriptions for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) in the Middle East and Africa are expected to touch 4.45 million by 2012 as the business is witnessing an unprecedented level of growth, an industry report said.

There is strong demand for mobile, fixed-line and pay-TV services, according to a report by research firm Informa Telecoms & Media.

The report said the Middle East region will see a massive increase in wireless broadband penetration with the influx of new technologies.

Taking year-on-year growth into account, three of the five fastest growth companies are in the Gulf.

"The first deployments of mobile WiMAX will take place this year and it will not be broadly deployed until 2009," the report said.

Wireless broadband services are likely to pick up in terms of consumer demand, which will have a positive impact on the share of data revenues to overall revenues across the region, which at the end of the first half of 2008 stood at around 8.2 per cent.

Qatar-based QTel topped the list with the number of its global proportionate equity subscriptions climbing by 127 per cent year-on-year from just 9.7 million in September 2008 to 22.3 million in December 2008.

etisalat growth

The second largest growth was recorded by the UAE's etisalat with 75 per cent growth, ahead of Telekom Malaysia at 61 per cent, and Kuwait's Zain showing 52 per cent increase in subscriptions.

Both etisalat and Zain have stated their intentions to become global telecom players by 2010 and 2011 respectively. WiMAX is an initiative to develop standardised technologies and products in the fixed-wireless broadband market. It is based on two IEEE standards - the 802.16-2004 "fixed" WiMAX standard, also known as 802.16d; and the 802.16e-2005 "mobile" WiMAX standard, also known as 802.16e.

"By 2012 there will be 3.6 million WiMAX subscriptions in the Middle East and Africa region and 840,000 business subscriptions. Fixed services will dominate the WiMAX market in terms of subscriptions through to 2012.

Portable WiMAX subscription numbers will pick up and will almost draw level with fixed by 2012. But mobile WiMAX subscription numbers will remain much smaller, largely due to a lack of available spectrum," the report said.

In the past two years, a number of WiMAX services have been launched in the MEA region while a significant number of others are being deployed or have been licensed.

etisalat, which had launched the technology commercially in the Middle East in January 2004 much before many operators in Western Europe, had 141,000 3G subscribers at end-March. "One early barrier to subscription was a lack of WCDMA handsets in the UAE. But take-up remained slow even when the devices became more widely available.

Vendors said the problem was with etisalat and that it needed to develop services for 3G subscribers and promote the technology more effectively," the report said.

While WiMAX benefits from strong demand for alternative broadband access services in the region, it also faces strong competition from other wireless systems, Informa said.