MONTREAL, QC, CANADA AND BANGALORE, INDIA-The telecom market-research and analyst firm Maravedis (www.maravedis-bwa.com), in partnership with Tonse Telecom (www.tonsetelecom.com), a telecom and market-research firm in India, have released the second edition of the report entitled, "INDIA Wireless Broadband and WiMAX Market Analysis and forecasts 2007-2014." This study provides a detailed review of current regulatory challenges and overall wireless/WiMAX market trends in India.
"Vendors, operators, and system integrators are coming together like never before to work with whatever is available to trigger a bandwidth revolution," says Sridhar Pai, coauthor of the report and founder of Tonse Telecom-a partner of Maravedis. "Despite the spectrum complexities, the key energies for broadband growth, and the unclear situation on freeing the bandwidth, operators are not willing to wait-2008 could well become the Year of Wireless Broadband' for India and fulfill the expectations that had been anticipated for 2007," continues Pai.
Maravedis estimates that there will be up to 21 million WiMAX subscribers in India by 2014. According to the report, the steady CPE price reduction significantly impacted the potential ARPU, therefore contributing to favorably changing the market perspective. "Companies such as Telsima overcame the CPE price reduction of 50 percent as early as Q2 2007. Consequently, the big carriers are itching to go: Reliance, among others, already started commercial WiMAX services in Bangalore and has a number of RFPs on the way, but we believe there are more large-scale deployments to come," states Adlane Fellah, CEO of Maravedis.
The Indian economy is flourishing, and the demand for telecommunications services has outpaced the legacy wired telecommunication infrastructure. "In a country where broadband penetration is only 0.2 percent, we conservatively estimate that in the next 12 months, about 250,000 CPEs and 5000 basestation sectors will be sold in India. If some of the larger projects go through, the upside could be as high as 10,000 to 12,000 sectors and about 500,000 CPEs," says Pai. "At current equipment costs and given the bulk discounts expected by Indian operators, the total CPE/BS equipment market for 2008 may reach $50 to $120 million," adds Fellah.