As Ovum Asia Pacific research analyst Nathan Burley told BroadBand Communities, a lot is riding on the Sprint rollout and the activity in Asia, while important, is not on the same scale.
"We are yet to see if the problems at Sprint will affect the speed of its WiMax network development or its focus on the technology. Regardless the US remains the key market for WiMax to prove itself as a technology and to drive devices volumes," Burley said.
While no-one yet knows Sprint's plans, some analysts have already predicted that its WiMax rollout will slow. "We believe that Sprint is likely to de-emphasize the WiMax business, which could result in a slower rollout for WiMax in the US, lower economies of scale for Clearwire and shrink the ecosystem necessary to attract consumer electronics companies to WiMax," wrote Bear Stearns equity research analyst Philip Cusick in a note to investors.
If that were to happen, it would hurt the WiMax camp, particularly those pushing mobile WiMax. As Ovum's Burley pointed out, much of the activity in this region is focused on bringing basic connectivity to unwired areas.
"Asia is important to WiMax because of the vast numbers of unconnected people. There is little broadband and few wires. Much of WiMax in Asia is therefore about connecting the unconnected with DSL-like broadband services. In this respect Asia cannot take Sprint's place -- the target markets are different. If Clearwire was the poster child and was facing setbacks perhaps Asia could pick up the slack," he suggested.
Burley noted that the obvious exceptions to this were Taiwan and Japan. Taiwan this week was host to a two-day regional WiMAX Forum seminar, where a number of local announcements have been made. One of the more significant is that the Taiwanese government has signed MOUs with major vendors for the procurement of locally-made equipment.
The deal was inked between the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and five companies: Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, Sprint Nextel and Starent Networks. It said the aim was technological cooperation to help Taiwan-based makers quickly enter the international supply chain for WiMax hardware/software as part of the government's M-Taiwan program.
"Taiwan is important because of the government's commitment to the technology, m-Taiwan initiatives and driving down costs in manufacturing," noted Burley.
Meanwhile, he said the encouraging thing about Japan is that the 3G operators will be involved via consortiums. "This mean the development of services which do not cannibalize existing 3G offerings - and potentially more focus on consumer electronics," he noted.
Whether that's enough to keep the WiMax ball rolling, however, remains to be seen. "Within business models there is still a large reliance on Intel and Sprint," Burley said.
