WhyMAX?

WiMAX is fighting back. In-Stat has forecast that for at least the next few years, WiMAX will outpace LTE as fixed wireless operators come to market first with broadband services. Similarly, ZTE* has gone on record as predicting a WiMAX 'boom' in 2009, despite some of other major equipment vendors exiting the market.

That WiMAX will do better than LTE in 2009 is, of course, something of a truism. With the exception of Verizon which is ploughing on, operators are putting LTE roll-out plans on ice as the reality of the network build-out CAPEX hits home.

In-Stat reckons that HSPA+ will end up being WiMAX' biggest challenge ... and the same could be said of LTE. With Telstra already delivering 21Mbs and promising 42Mbs mobile broadband, the case for LTE from a pure speed perspective seems moot. OK, so the spectral efficiency of LTE means that ultimately, as mobile data traffic grows, they will have to migrate to LTE or else face diminishing returns as the cost of keeping the HSPA+ network at full throttle outweighs the revenue it enables... but at the moment, that's a problem of which operators can still only dream.

* ZTE is an AxiCom client