By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributing Editor
WiMAX 20/20 announced the launch of its upgraded WiROI Business Case Tool.
First launched last year, WiROI Business Case Tool was the first to provide network operators and equipment manufacturers with a comprehensive analysis of the capital and operational expenses for deploying aWiMAX ( News - Alert) network. The tool helps them to develop comprehensive business cases, understand their financial requirements, and build a detailed 10-year income statement to gain funding from demanding financiers, the company said.
Equipment manufacturers also use WiROI as a marketing tool to show the tangible financial value-added benefits of using their equipment in an operator's deployment plans.
According to WiMAX 20/20, WiROI Business Case Tool has been upgraded incorporating an expanded dashboard-style Graphical User Interface (GUI), side-by-side vendor and technology comparison capabilities and enhancements, and the ability to model services such as voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), video on demand (VOD) andIPTV ( News - Alert).
WiROI 2.0 Business Case Tool accepts a wide range of market data, technical parameters, and financial and service planning inputs that can be tailored to a particular geography. It can be used in all types of WiMAX deployments: both developing and developed markets, in small and large multi-city deployments, for rural, urban, and combination networks.
WiROI Tool allows operators to customize the model for their own particular market deployment, services strategy, and financial constraints. It can produce real-time sensitivity analysis based on certain input parameters for a particular deployment.
The new tool allows operators to do side-by-side comparisons of up to five vendors in the access and core network, providing in depth analysis of the capital expense requirements. It can simulate a WiMAX network deployment and operation using a variety of service plans and produces a detailed 10-year income statement, financial output graphs, and key financial metrics.
The dashboard-style GUI incorporates animated selectors, sliders and buttons, allowing the user to vary key input parameters and visualize the output immediately in a variety of animated financial output charts. Using these features, network operators and equipment manufacturers can quickly visualize and understand the critical issues that could affect their deployment or development plans.
Other important features of WiROI 2.0 tool include the ability to estimate the number of cell sites and various options for selecting a WiMAX network infrastructure required to support specific coverage and capacity requirements.
Since its launch, WiROI Tool has been used in more than 25 WiMAX deployments on five continents. The tool has proved its flexibility to accurately model a variety of deployment plans and service offerings.
According to Randall Schwartz, principal at WiMAX 20/20, the new tool, with its enhanced features such as the new GUI with improved analysis features and its ability to model advanced services, enhances the operator’s ability to analyze their business and show the full financial potential of their deployment plan.
"The challenge of securing financing in the current environment requires operators to use a tool like WiROI to build a bankable business case and get funded," said Schwartz.
Magnus Johansson, director of Broadband of Digicel (News - Alert) in Jamaica, said, "With WiROI, we've gained confidence in the financial outputs and operational modeling of our planned WiMAX networks and have analyzed various deployment scenarios with ease."
"We find the sensitivity analysis capability of the WiROI Tool particularly unique and useful," said Berge Ayvazian (News - Alert), chief strategy officer at the Yankee Group. "The WiROI Tool offers the ability to accurately model a WiMAX network and allows the user to visualize the financial impact of a variety of parameters and should be viewed as an invaluable tool to anyone deploying or designing a WiMAX network."
Telecommunications equipment vendor Redline Communications (News - Alert) has found WiROI as an effective tool to clearly demonstrate the potential return on investment for various WiMAX deployment scenarios. Kevin Suitor, VP of Marketing at Redline Communications, said the WiROI Tool helped them to model a Redline-based access network and compare it with a traditional implementation, enabling them to articulate the benefits of their technology to their customers as well as channel partners.
source : 4g-wirelessevolution.tmcnet.com
