Mobile broadband comes in many flavors

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Investment grows 41 percent if two years

Mobile broadband comes in many flavors
Timo Poropudas

23 Mar 2006 at 17:50


Video drives wireless braodband networks. Mobile operators use various broadband and cellular technologies in building their new networks. These include WCDMA, WiFi, and WiMAX, says a new report by Infonetics Research.

According to the Infonetics study, the 18 North American, European, and Asia Pacific carriers interviewed spent an average of USD 2.9 billion in 2005 on next generation mobile and wireless broadband equipment, and will spend USD 4.1 billion in 2007, a 41 percent increase.

Mobile users want to replicate their wireline broadband experience on the go, driving 3G uptake. This will push carriers to spend a healthy proportion of their next gen mobile and wireless broadband capex on upgrading from 2.5G to 3G base station systems.

“The range of available applications accessible via a mobile handset is going to rapidly expand over the coming years,” said Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics Research.

“For example, most of our respondents offer mobile/wireless VPN services by 2007, interactive gaming is offered by 83 percent of respondents by 2007, and caller ID, unified and multimedia messaging, and video download/playback all grow to 72 percent by next year. Not surprisingly, IP-based multimedia and video services are expected to be the bedrock of future revenue growth.”

Bundling, cost, new apps

The top 3 drivers for adopting next gen mobile or wireless broadband are: bundling with other services, reducing opex, and offering new applications The top 2 top drivers for deploying IMS and next gen voice equipment are availability of new applications and services, and lower operational costs.

22 percent of respondents already have deployed the fixed WiMAX standard (802.16d), and this number will grow to 50 percent by 2007.

Bundled VoIP with WiFi will grow even faster. 6 percent of respondents offer it now, but by 2007 44 percent of respondents plan to it available.

3G and WiMAX show the most dramatic growth by 2007 among wireless backhaul solutions. The number of 3G base stations deployed by respondents nearly triples between 2006 and 2007, driven by operators’ intent to offer video and mobile IPTV services.

Respondents say their key 3G infrastructure design requirements include high quality video capabilities, fast network reactivity, high session rate, and high capacity


Wireless broadband drivers according to Infonetics Research