The Asia-Pacific region has overtaken north America as the home to the largest number of 4G broadband wireless subscribers, according to figures from Telegeography’s 4G research service.
Subscription in the Asia-Pacific region has increased by 7% in the past year to 1.7 million, or 29% of the total 5.7 million 4G subscribers globally. North America was second, down one place from last year on figures based on the year ending March 2010 with 1.4 million subscribers, predominantly in the US and Canada.
Telegeography says Wimax is attractive to operators in Asia as it is cheap and can bypass the last mile in fixed access networks, which are still dominated by the incumbent operators.
The third largest market for 4G is eastern Europe with approximately 1.1 million subscribers. This growth is driven by Russian operators like Yota in Russia, which is committed to converting its network from Wimax to LTE cellular technology.
