According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the service provider mesh wireless LAN market declined by almost 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, but is expected to reverse this trend and experience double-digit growth in 2009. The report indicates that in the fourth quarter municipal WiFi contributed to more than 70 percent sequential growth in Cablevision’s net subscriber additions, a rate higher than any other cable operator in North America.
“In the two quarters since Cablevision’s rollout of Optimum WiFi, a complementary outdoor WiFi service for its existing broadband subscribers, Cablevision has seen a strong lift in net subscriber additions,” said Ben Kwan, Analyst of Wireless LAN research at Dell’Oro Group. “Cablevision’s Optimum WiFi service is rekindling interest in municipal WiFi applications among other large service providers, such as Comcast. For this and other reasons, we believe municipal WiFi applications will become an increasingly important growth driver for the service provider mesh market in 2009,” added Kwan.
The report also indicates that strong, double-digit revenue growth for enterprise-grade 802.11n equipment was only able to partially offset a sharp decline in 802.11a/g equipment sales in the fourth quarter
