Analysis: WiMAX's commitment problem

It’s not just that the WiMAX keeps losing adherents—it’s that it keeps losing the wrong ones.

The WiMAX Forum counts 582 operators globally in its ranks. It can afford a few defections to long-term evolution (LTE). But its most high-profile and largest operators seem to be the ones doing the defecting. Last week Packet 1 of Malaysia signaled it would begin Time Division-LTE (TD-LTE) trials this year and upgrade its WIMAX systems to the technology in 2012 (The Star: Latest 4G trial by P1 soon)

Packet One reported 280,000 customers in January, not a huge amount, but considering Malaysia’s size nothing to scoff at. More significantly, Packet One is one of the small percentage of WiMAX providers that use the technology for mobile broadband rather than as residential or business DSL-replacement service.

Those handful of providers are the ones driving what’s left of the WiMAX ecosystem--getting WiMAX chips embedded in laptops, USB cards and a few smartphones and tablets. Those providers also are the ones that are making the biggest contribution to WiMAX’s global subscriber growth. The WiMAX Forum estimates that the technology’s 13 million users are split evenly between fixed and mobile users, driven by a handful of high-profile mobile operators like Sprint, Clearwire, Korea Telecom, Japan’s UQ Communications and Russia’s Yota, as well as multiple networks running in Taiwan and Malaysia. Some of WiMAX’s growth has been driven by a handful of big-name fixed providers like Axtel in Mexico and BSNL in India, but those operators are starting to launch their first nomadic and mobile broadband services, too (CP: WiMAX’s fixed user base shifting to mobile)

The WiMAX Forum projects the technology’s future growth will be driven by these larger mobile broadband operators, but one by one many these same operators are abandoning WiMAX for LTE. Yota was the first (Unfiltered: Yota’s big switch—repercussions for Clearwire?), but many of WiMAX’s biggest champions have already either put their weight behind LTE or are trialing the technology.

You can count the first WiMAX operator, KT, among those in trials, while fellow Korean powerhouse SK Telecom—which was never really that committed to WiMAX but among the first to launch—has selected vendors and plans a full-bore LTE rollout (It’s probably no coincidence Packet One recently received a sizable investment from SK).

WiMAX’s biggest advocate (Telephony: The World According to Barry) Sprint claims it is now on the fence between WiMAX and LTE, but everyone expects them to announce an LTE rollout plan this summer, if not earlier (CP: ALU, Ericsson licensing Samsung WiMAX tech, Unfiltered: Sprint CEO says all 4G paths involve Clearwire, WiMAX). Clearwire, which supplies Sprint and many others WiMAX network capacity, is testing different configurations of LTE, hinting at the possibility of making its own conversion in the future (CP: Clearwire trialing LTE).

More: The LTE Advantage: Bigger Ecosystem and the Emergence of TD-LTE