According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), worldwide local-loop demand is expected to result in 800 million new lines by the year 2000. Of these, 685 million will be in emerging countries, and 115 million will be in developed countries. Figure 4, which has been sourced from ITU/AMD, is based on ITU historical data from 1992 to 1994. It assumes the growth rate for each country remains the same as from 1992 to 1994. It also assumes that unserved demand, which represents people on official waiting lists as of 1994 (43 million), will remain a constant percentage of installed lines.

Figure 4. Worldwide Local-Loop Demand

The WLL market is just entering its infancy. Because of this, projections have been extended out to the year 2002 to show the true potential of this market. By the end of 2002, forecasts indicate that there will be 339 million WLL lines installed throughout the world. The vast majority of these lines will be in emerging countries, with a small percentage in developed countries. The underlying assumption of this forecast is that demand for POTS in emerging countries will outstrip the post telephone & telegraph administration (PTT's) abilities to install copper wire. Also, the costs of WLL will continue to decline, while the cost of copper wire installation will stay flat. The lower cost of WLL (especially in low-density population areas) and the ability to install WLL more rapidly than copper wire will motivate the PTTs of the emerging countries to serve excess demand with WLL.

Some projections assume that although WLL serves only 5 percent of the current excess POTS demand in emerging countries, it will grow to serve 70 percent of the excess demand by the year 2002. Similarly, it is estimated that WLL will be used for a growing percentage of new lines even in locations where copper-wire service is already available. This forecast assumes that WLL's share of these lines in emerging countries will grow from 5 percent in current years to 35 percent by 2002.

The penetration of WLL into developed countries is assumed to be much lower than in emerging countries. The PTTs are able to keep up with the demand for new POTS lines so unserved demand is not an issue. The requirement for WLL in developed countries will come from companies that want to bypass the established local phone companies or customers who want the additional services that WLL can provide. This is a small subset of the total population so it can be assumed that WLL will gain only 5 percent (however, the competitive bypass could drastically increase this percentage) market share by 2002. Table 1 summarizes the forecast for WLL.

	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
emerging countries	16	34	64	111	183	296
developed countries	7	13	21	31	37	43
total	23	47	85	142	220	339

Table 1. Worldwide Number of Potential WLL Lines (in millions)

WLL Market Segments
The two basic market segments for WLL are for basic phone service in emerging economies and for wireless bypass in developed economies. The requirements for each of these segments in urban/suburban and rural areas are shown in Table 2.

	Developed (Bypass)	Emerging (POTS)
urban/suburban	high-speed data enhanced services limited mobility high traffic/subscriber densities	POTS (voice quality) modem data no (limited) mobility high traffic/subscriber densities
rural	high-speed data enhanced services limited mobility low subscriber densities wide coverage	POTS (voice quality) modem data no (limited) mobility low subscriber densities

Table 2. Service Requirements for WLL by Market Segment

Table 3, which has been sourced from AMD, Shosteck, shows how the total number of new WLL installations by the year 2000 will be divided among the four quadrants of Table 2.

	Developed (Bypass)	Emerging (POTS)
urban/suburban	9 percent plus bypass upside potential of 25 percent	51 percent
rural	6 percent plus bypass upside potential of 10 percent	34 percent

Table 3. Distribution of New WLL Installations by the Year 2000