WiMAX Vendors

According to Springboard's report, Motorola is the leader in the WiMAX vendor community in Asia Pacific for 2008, on the basis of a large number of significant WiMAX contracts won, along with a well-defined strategy to develop more WiMAX business in the region. The report goes on to rank individual WiMAX equipment vendors using Springboard's WiMAX 'Vendor Leadership Index.' According to the index, the top five WiMAX vendors in Asia Pacific are:

1. Motorola

2. Alcatel-Lucent

3. Samsung

4. Nortel

5. Cisco

"Traditional equipment vendors are expected to dominate the rankings as the market evolves and becomes more mature, due to their strong historical relationship with most telecom operators and extensive deployment and operation capabilities," Wang explained.

Regulatory Environment

Springboard's report added that telecom operators are fast overcoming their concerns about accommodating WiMAX within their existing frequency allocation framework. While Australia was one of the first countries in the world to release broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum for WiMAX services in 2004, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore and Japan are other prominent countries to have issued similar licenses in 2007. India, Thailand and Indonesia are expected to announce spectrum allocation by 2008, while China is expected to hold off until 2009.

"With the maturity of WiMAX technology, and more operators and regulators around the world supporting WiMAX, we have seen most regulators in this region now announcing their plans to clear unused spectrum, or collect the spectrum used by the satellite or broadcasting industries, and re-allocate these spectrums specifically for the use of broadband wireless access (BWA)," Wang said.