The third quarter of 2008 saw worldwide mobile WiMAX infrastructure revenues ramping up as compared to the same quarter the previous year.

The news has been backed up by analyst firm the Dell'Oro Group.  Scott Siegler, senior analyst of mobile infrastructure research at Dell'Oro Group reported, “With LTE still a couple of years away, WiMAX has become the first next-generation technology with commercial service. Mobile WiMAX revenues were very strong in the third quarter of last year, and we anticipate revenue for the fourth quarter to set another record.”

However, it should be mentioned here that the outlook is not that positive too. It has been predicted by Dell’Ora that in the state of the global credit crunch, the present year might prove to be quite difficult for WiMAX community.

Siegler said, “As we look into 2009, we expect the WiMAX market to be hit rather hard by the economic downturn. Building out brand new networks from scratch requires tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars of capital.”

If it is viewed from a technological development standpoint, then it means that this will shorten the time-to-market advantage that WiMAX. Dell’Ora is expecting that initial LTE rollouts in the 2010 to 2011 timeframe.

The latest quarterly report by the analyst also shows that nearly 90 per cent of the total market was represented by top four mobile WiMAX vendors in 3Q 2008, which were Samsung, Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent and Alvarion.