HONG KONG (WiMAX Day). The global investment firm Lehman Brothers released a research note today that boasts significant growth prospects for WiMAX in Asia.

The report stated that the Asian markets most likely to derive the greatest benefit from WiMAX would be those in the developing Asian economies and rural Australia.

Amongst the key contributors to growth in these markets will be “where the copper infrastructure is too weak or limited to provide broadband services using DSL…. WiMAX and other wireless broadband technologies will be particularly successful in markets – such as India, Malaysia, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia – with low broadband penetration.”

In developed economies such as Australia, WiMAX is likely to develop rapidly in rural regions, the report said, “where there is sufficient purchasing power but a lack of robust fixed-line infrastructure to provide DSL. The prime beneficiaries are likely to be Unwired Australia and Austar.”

The catalyst to success in these areas will be swift deployment. As in a previous report, Unwired was noted for its ability to quickly deploy its network, “one of the fastest broadband network deployments known.” If Unwired gets a chunk of the funding for recent government initiatives, such as the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program (BCIP) that intends to support rural broadband access with AU$878 million, Australia soon may be the first country in the world to have truly ubiquitous WiMAX.

Some winners and some losers
Some of the biggest winners, and losers, in the Asian WiMAX market will be incumbent telecoms, according to Lehman Brothers. On the plus side, companies such as Bharti, VSNL and Reliance Comm that are planning WiMAX networks in India, where broadband access stands at only 2%, stand to reap a windfall.

In Southeast Asia, the report notes companies such as Indosat, PLDT and PT-Telkom that are in key positions to deploy WiMAX to increase broadband penetration.

The rapid growth of WiMAX also will have a negative effect on many incumbent telecom operators that have ADSL networks that cannot compete with WiMAX, or do not have licenses for WiMAX.

The investment firm believes that companies such as China Telecom, China Netcom, Chunghwa Telecom, MTNL, Telstra, and Telekom Malaysia “are a few of the fixed/integrated telecom operators in the region that could see some of their broadband business hurt by the growth of fixed wireless broadband services offered by WiMAX.”

The problem will become more acute for incumbent telecoms in the near-term “as more wire-line traffic is related to broadband data (including VoIP) versus voice traffic,” and the incumbent telecom operators increasingly will lose their data-hungry customers to WiMAX service providers.