PRESS RELEASE
Maravedis predicts WiMAX subscribers to reach
13 million in India by 2012
Leading research firms Maravedis and Tonse Telecom release new market study entitled “India Wireless
Broadband and WiMAX Market Analysis and Forecasts 2006-2012” to provide an in-depth review of
current regulatory and overall wireless market trends in India.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONTREAL, Canada, and BANGALORE, India, June 27, 2006 –
The leading telecom market research and analyst firm Maravedis, in partnership with Tonse Telecom, the
Indian leader in Telecom market research and analysis, today released a new Market study entitled “India Wireless Broadband and WiMAX Market Analysis and Forecasts 2006-2012”. This study
provides a detailed review of current regulatory and overall wireless market trends in India.
“According to our research, we can expect 13 million WiMAX subscribers in India by 2012” said Adlane
Fellah, co-author of the report and Senior Analyst at Maravedis Inc. The Indian economy is flourishing
and the demand is quickly outpacing the supply of telecommunications services provided by the legacy
wired telecommunication infrastructure built during the state monopoly era. “More than 70% of Indian
households do not have access to fixed telephone services. Instead, customers have flocked to cellular
phone carriers, which have built a tremendous infrastructure to provide services to more than 100 million
customers” continued Fellah.
Broadband services were launched in India in 2005. ADSL services now cover 300 towns with 1.5 million
connections while broadband wireless subscriber figures are still negligible. In a country where monthly
broadband ARPU is estimated at $8-10, and computer penetration is still at around 4%, BWA / WiMAX
adoption will depend on very low cost end-to-end pricing for connectivity including the compute platform
and CPE. The Indian telecom sector operates in a volume-driven market. If WiMAX is to succeed it will
only be on the premise of huge volumes not, small deployments
“Bharti TeleVentures, Reliance, BSNL and VSNL (Tata Group) have all acquired licenses in 3.3GHz
range and are in various stages of trials and modest commercial deployments. Maravedis Tonse has
gathered evidence that larger deployments will start to materialize in early 2007 but volumes in the
millions will take a few years to materialize. The planned release of additional spectrum will be critical to
this” explained Fellah.
“However, shortage of spectrum is a serious obstacle for massive adoption of broadband wireless and
WiMAX in India. For WiMAX to prosper in India, license holders will need at least 20MHz of spectrum
while they currently hold 12MHz or less. 20MHz is a minimum to support wide scale deployments and
hence a profitable business case” added Sridhar, co-author of the report and CEO of Tonse Telecom
Government appears to be serious about solving the problem by releasing some of the spectrum from the
departments of Space and Defense and the TRAI is currently engaged in a critical public consultation.
Wireless adoption is essential if the government wishes to meet its ambitious plans.
ABOUT MARAVEDIS
Maravedis is a leading research and analysis firm focusing on Broadband Wireless technologies including
WiMAX, 802.20, TD-CDMA and Wireless Local Loop Systems. Maravedis has established itself over the
years as the most credible and reliable resource for market intelligence in the broadband wireless
industry. Maravedis works with equipment vendors, service providers, regulators and the investment
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community to produce a sound market analysis based on hard primary data and an in-depth
understanding of technology, market and regulation trends.
For more information, please visit www.maravedis-bwa.com.
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