Subscriber growth for WiMAX operators continues in all
regions as they build their customer bases. There is a strong growth in the
U.S., the Indian sub-continent, and Latin America. With the levels of operator
activity and device ecosystem growing, WiMAX subscribers will surpass 100
million by the end of 2015, according to Infonetics Research.

 

The WiMAX Forum announced that WiMAX technology has
reached the 20 million global subscriber mark at the end of Q2 2011.

 

Worldwide WiMAX subscribers passed the 20 million mark
around the mid-point of 2011 and are on track to meet our forecast for around
25 million by the end of this year,” said Richard Webb, directing analyst —
WiMAX, Microwave & Mobile Devices at Infonetics Research.

 

In the first half of 2011 UQ Communications of Japan
doubled its subscriber base, breaking the one million subscriber mark in June.
Also in Asia Pacific, new Malaysian WiMAX operator YTL, which just launched
WiMAX services in November of 2010, had netted over 300,000 subscribers by
June.

 

At an event in July, in which UQ Communications hosted
the first public field trial of WiMAX 2, UQ and YTL signed a MoU to develop a
pan-Pacific WiMAX hotzone.

 

By taking advantage of WiMAX technology’s high speed
access and personal Wi-Fi hotspot devices, UQ is growing its subscriber base
exponentially and reached 1 million customers in June,” said Akio Nozaka,
president of UQ Communications.

 

UQ Communications would like to cooperate with other
WiMAX operators worldwide to expand broadband wireless Internet to deal with
rapid growth of data traffic.

 

Clearwire and its wholesale partners continue to grow
their subscriber base. Clearwire ended the second quarter of 2011 with 7.65
million total subscribers, up 365 percent from 2Q 2010. Clearwire also again
increased its guidance to an expected 10 million subscribers by the end of
2011.

 

Also in the Americas, Jamaican operator Digicel leveraged
its WiMAX network to capture 25 percent of the local broadband market in less
than a year; and Mexican WiMAX operator AXTEL increased its WiMAX subscriber
base by over 80 percent to over 332,000.

 

In Europe, Irish operator Imag!ne, Bulgarian operator Max
Telecom and Lithuanian operator LRTC all also made great subscriber gains and
released new consumer devices.As subscriber counts continue to grow throughout
2011, operators continue to invest in new networks and network expansions.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]