Clearwire has scheduled a webcast for Monday, August 30, to “unveil its plans to serve a new customer segment.” People are excited to find out what the criteria for the new customer will be. Judging from the way Clearwire is going about marketing their service, right now their customer base is in the 18-24 age bracket. The speculation as to what they are planning to do is rampant online involvement on various blogs and websites. It’s up to anyone to hypothesize, but some guesses are more intelligent than others.
Clearwire has been getting plenty of criticism for coming out last month with intentions to test out LTE technology, most likely because WiMAX isn’t a technology the mobile industry has any interest in furthering its advancement in the mobile field. With a combination of WiMAX and LTE, Clearwire might have the security to move forward in the mobile sector. Maybe Clearwire will finally come forward as a leader in mobile technology, taking the initiative and monetizing on their precedence in the 4G market.
Other possibilities floating around include partnerships and advancements in the emerging M2M/smart grid space. The company has said in the past that it intends to pursue other wholesale customers aside from its core investors like Sprint, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable. They already signed contracts last month with Best Buy, giving Best Buy the opportunity to market Clear service under their own branding, Best Buy Connect.
Another possibility is that Clear might be introducing a prepaid mobile WiMAX approach like the kinds Sprint/Nextel CEO Dan Hesse has mentioned numerous times in the last couple of months. Sprint is the majority shareholder of Clearwire and they are selling Clear’s WiMAX technology under their own branding. Maybe Clear will begin marketing their services just like Sprint does.
One thing remains certain though, is that no matter what they do, Clear can capitalize on their early placement in the 4G market just by lowering their prices to rates that newcomers Verizon and MetroPCS can’t compete with. If they start off the cut-throat competition with low rates, then their adversaries wouldn’t be viable options until they have launched in enough markets and/or raised enough capital to sell their services and sustain low margins.
Whatever the case, Monday is bound to be a big deal. When Clear announced their wholesale arrangement with Best Buy, they didn’t hold anything close to a webcast. (They wrote a press release and sent it out.) The fact that members of the press and industry analysts are invited to stream it live appears to make it a bigger event than the release of information of a major upcoming profit gain in the form of a partnership with Best Buy. What they actually plan on informing the public is something we will have to wait until Monday to find out.
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