Vertical services will reach 24% of WiMAX subscriptions and 14% of LTE subscriptions by 2014, and represent a huge growth opportunity for operators facing flat ARPUs, says a new report from Senza Fili Consulting.
Enterprises who have historically shunned mobile data applications are warming up to specialized, vertical applications including mobile-to-mobile (M2M), in-vehicle telematics and mobile workforce support.
The report estimates that there will be over 154 million connections supporting vertical applications within 3G, WiMAX, and LTE networks by 2014. That’s more than US$43 billion in potential service revenues. “Vertical services can be very profitable for operators,” says Senza Fili’s Monica Paolini. “They bring in a steady revenue stream generated by a small number of contracts, each with a high number of connections.”
The most widely deployed applications are expected to be vehicle telematics and support for the mobile workforce. They require the bandwidth and wide-area coverage that 3G, WiMAX, and LTE support. Additional mobile broadband market growth will come from emerging consumer applications available in vehicles and in mobile and CE devices that extend mobile broadband beyond individuals to connect the entire environment.
“We’re clearly going to do stuff with the Android platform,” said Ben Wolff, CEO of Clearwire.
But — when? “I can’t answer that. Not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. They say the middle of next year,” he said. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Meanwhile, Verizon’s “open access” network project won’t have much to do with us puny humans, says Unstrung. In fact, 90 percent of the devices that are in the process of certification are actually focused on machine-to-machine (M2M) communication with a wide array of sensors, tracking devices, temperature monitors, and other gizmos. In fact, Tony Lewis, Verizon’s VP of open development, tells Unstrung that the first two devices that have been certified for open use over Verizon’s CDMA wireless network are a storage tank-monitoring device from SupplyNet Communications and a prisoner-tracking electronic ankle bracelet.
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