In a report released by Springboard Research, the analyst forecasts a whopping 15.8 million WiMax subscribers in India by 2012. I am a little bit skeptical about this forecast.
At the end of May-2008, India had 4.15 mn broadband subscribers [most of them Wired / DSL] DoT’s target for 2010 is 20 mn broadband subscribers. To achieve this target, the growth in rate of subscriber addition should be 87.5% YoY over the next 2.5 years. However, between 2006 and 2008, the CAGR in subscriber addition has been 70%. Bharti Airtel the only company which transparently publishes its broadband subscriber figures indicate a growth rate of mere 33% YoY [between Fy2006-07 and Fy2007-08]. This means Bharti Airtel has been underperforming the industry growth rate in Broadband services. So assuming a base case scenario of 70% CAGR, India will have approximately 16 mn subscribers by the end of 2010.
Now coming to WiMax 1.0 in India, which is a miserable failure, I wonder why and how companies would like to go forward with deployments without addressing customer issues. My sources tell me there are 150,00 connections at the max on PAN India basis. However, lets consider 250,000 as on today and a 70% CAGR over the next 4.5 years will yield mere 2.7 mn, far shorter than Springbroad’s estimate of 15.8 mn subscribers. Adding to WiMax’s woes is DoT’s dirty brains to tie the cost of WiMax spectrum with 3G, thus escalating deployment costs.
I have dropped a mail to Mr. Wang of Springboard and it would be nice to see my calculation go wrong and India really have 15.8 mn Wimax and ~32-35mn wired broadband subscribers by 2012 🙂 Your views ?
Here is another projection by Strategy Analytics which puts the number at 14 mn subscribers by 2013. No response form Mr. Wang of Springboard research yet.
Courtesy: ET 07-FEB-09