"We are competing against base station vendors that have developed their own CPEs [customer premise equipment]," says Dave Gelvin, president of Tranzeo USA. "We have built our WiMAX business on CPEs with high volume radio components, and have announced relationships with multiple base station partners like Vecima and [Markham-headquartered] Redline Communications."
Gelvin notes that the WiMAX rollout in Indonesia is well-funded from the Tower Group, and that the market potential is immense. "Indonesia has 234 million people," he says, adding that Internet and phone penetration is low. "We expect rapid growth for Internet and telephony."
Alan Solheim, VP product management for Ottawa-headquartered DragonWave Inc., which designs and manufactures microwave equipment - and which recently announced a deal for WiMAX, 3.5G, Evolution Data Only (EVDO) and Long-Term Evolution (LTE) services in Nigeria - thinks WiMAX still has a future.
"WiMAX is not dead, either internationally or in North America," he says. "In the Middle
East, Africa, and to a lesser extent South America, all the good spectrum is owned by WiMAX players. On the mobile front LTE may win in the long run, but mass market LTE is a couple of years away at best."
However, at the end of the day, fixed WiMAX is a smaller market than mobile, which explains why the larger infrastructure vendors have been exiting the market. This opens up opportunities though for small Canadian players like Eion Inc. and SR Telecom Inc., particularly if Canada gets around to licensing the 3.65-3.7 GHz band.
"The US has seen an economic downturn but the FCC has released the 3.65 GHz spectrum, which is lightly licensed and therefore virtually free," says Forget. "This is perfectly aligned with Obama's directives and with the requirements of regional WISPs [wireless Internet service providers]."
Industry Canada has proposed licensing provisions for the 3.65-3.7 GHz band for both fixed and mobile services, but there hasn't been much movement, perhaps due to the need to understand requirements around exclusion zones and the creation of the right policies.
"WiMAX is ideally for licensed spectrum, and that's held by a handful of companies in
Canada," says Forget. "If Industry Canada were to go ahead with a ‘light licence' for 3.65 in Canada they wouldn't make millions and millions of dollars, but it would be ideal for the community. In Canada we are often a close follower to the US, and I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar to what the Americans have done with 3.65 in Canada in the not too-distant future."