Pent-up demand to boost high-speed Internet in Asia

BANGKOK (THAILAND): Pent-up demand for mobile Internet in emerging markets in Asia will boost growth of WiMax, a new super high speed wireless technology, industry executives said on Wednesday.

There were 1.5 million WiMax subscribers globally last year and the number should breach 5 million this year, said Sunil Kumar, director of marketing at Beceem Communications Inc, a US-based provider of chips for the mobile broadband market.

"This is an important year for WiMax. We can see a lot of trials going on around the globe," Kumar told Reuters.

The number of WiMax subscribers worldwide was expected to reach 36 million by 2011, Phil Marshall, senior vice president of consultant firm Yankee Group told an industry conference.

WiMax, expected to bring new revenues to the telecoms sector, allows users with a WiMAX-enabled laptops or mobile devices to download data, songs and movies at distances as much as tens of kilometres.

It is a big brother to Wi-Fi, which connects users to networks over short distances. The number of WiMAX subscribers in Asia was expected to rise to more than 11 million by 2011, accounting for 30 percent of the WiMAX subscribers globally, a conference statement said.

About 281 WiMAX networks have been deployed by 29 companies and 15 chipmakers, said Daniel Cho, chief strategy office of South Korea's POSDATA, which is working with a Thai telecoms firm on WiMax trials in Bangkok.

By 2010, 650 million people around the world would have WiMax coverage, Cho said.

Given the low Internet penetration rate in Asia and the fact that anyone can surf Internet with small devices like WiMax-enabled cameras, the growth potential was huge, the executives said.

"Asia's cell phone penetration rate is still very low. The rate might be remarkable in urban areas, but in rural areas, that's huge market to grow," Kumar said.

Beceem, which competes with bigger rivals like Intel, was looking for opportunities to work with leading operators in emerging markets and in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand and Vietnam, Kumar said.

Motorola, which makes mobile devices and infrastructure with WiMax technology, has joined Thailand's United Information Highway Co Ltd to conduct trials in Bangkok and on the resort island of Phuket.

The number of broadband Internet customers in Thailand was expected to reach 6-7 percent of the 65-million population by 2011 from below two percent now, said Mike Ropicky, senior director for marketing and product operation for a Motorola unit.

"That's a dramatic growth and WiMax will be one of the means of access for Thai people to get into the Internet," Ropicky said.

Thailand is expected to start commercial services of WiMaX sometime next year after the telecoms regulators allowed 12 local companies to test the services last year.