Influence of technical improvements on the business case for a mobile WiMAX network

Abstract

From a technical point of view, Mobile WiMAX may offer an appropriate solution for delivering broadband wireless access. Two remaining questions, however, are whether the rollout of a WiMAX network is economically feasible or not, and how technical improvements like MIMO, beamforming and turbo-coding can influence the business case. In this paper different technical scenarios for a Mobile WiMAX rollout are defined and evaluated from an economic as well as a technical perspective. To obtain realistic figures, we have defined a business case for a Mobile WiMAX rollout in Belgium, a country with a high wired broadband penetration. Further, we give an indication about the feasibility of a Mobile WiMAX network related to the population density. Finally, as the introduction of a new technology involves a lot of uncertainties, a detailed sensitivity analysis on both the economic and technical input parameters is performed to determine the most influencing parameters