Evan Kessler on November 11, 2010
| 2 comments
Things are getting a little testy between WiMax business partners Clearwire and Sprint as of late. With the recent 3rd quarter assessment that Clearwire is not monetarily equipped for the long-haul, the former best friends of WiMax technology in the U.S. are in a bit of a spat over the money Sprint pays Clearwire to have their WiMax-equipped smartphones operating on the latter’s network.
The ability to charge their chief stakeholder for each 4G handset means big business for Clearwire, with 3 million HTC Evo 4Gs and Samsung Epic 4Gs expected to ship by the end of 2010. Sprint is supposed to pay $4.46 to Clearwire per 4G user, but complications arise when the amount of customers living in places where access to WiMax 4G has yet to be activated is taken to account. 810,000 Sprint phone users of 4G phones are without a technology to take advantage of, and Sprint is withholding funds accordingly.
In order to resolve this situation, Sprint and Clearwire have entered arbitration, but things stand to get uglier for Clearwire if things don’t go their way. A company spokesman admitted that the loss of these per handset payouts in areas still unequipped with WiMax could result in an inability to fulfill their previously drawn up plans for further WiMax rollout across lacking U.S. markets. While from a customer’s perspective Sprint’s reluctance to payout the $4.46 makes sense, you have to wonder whether Sprint is interested in seeing the WiMax network completed so that they might continue to compete with other upcoming 4G offerings from Verizon, AT&T and MetroPCS; or whether they’re just slowly backing away from the whole scene and hoping some big company with a lot of money buys them off and makes the WiMax experiment all just go away. … Read the rest
Ari Zoldan on December 11, 2008
Ari Zoldan, CEO of Quantum Networks, recently spoke with Ben Kolada, an analyst with the New Paradigm Resources Group, as part of NPRG’s Conversations with Communications Innovators podcast series. Ari discussed the international reach of WiMAX technology, the potential for WiMAX in the United States, and the implications of the Sprint/Clearwire rollout, including the nature of the relationship of WiMAX technology to Long Term Evolution.
New Paradigm Resources Group is a strategic consulting and research firm for communications innovators. NPRG’s podcast series, available in full at the NPRG homepage, contains discussions with the leaders who are shaping the telecommunications industry.… Read the rest
Ari Zoldan on July 11, 2008
The Sprint-Clearwire deal gave Clearwire undeniable credibility in WiMAX development, and the company is moving forward with the technology in a big way. Beta tests are underway in Portland, with “more than 70 percent of [the] WiMAX sites for Portland…in construction or on air.” Completion is slated for the end of year, with commercial deployments in that city and 3 others in 2009.
But now they have more than just the hardware; as of July 2nd, Clearwire has leased 3 one-year licenses on the 39 GHz spectrum from IDT Spectrum, 2 of which are in the Oregon-Washington area. You may not have heard much about IDT Spectrum recently, but expect to hear the name much in the near future; they own spectrums nationwide, mostly in the 28 and 38/39 GHz range. As we come upon the dawning age of wireless, the value of spectrum cannot be understated: you need spectrum to do anything wireless–especially for WiMAX, which is contentionless. (That means it can only operate on licensed spectrum because it is built to assume the air is clear. If it isn’t, the equipment just doesn’t work! ). Naturally, some companies are trying to develop equipment to change that, but for now, that is the nature of most WiMAX equipment. Those who bought spectrum when a majority of it was auctioned off by the FCC in the 80s are finally seeing their investment bear fruit, whether they intend to lease or sell – remember the 700MHz auction earlier this year, which grossed a total of $19 billion?
So Clearwire has hardware, spectrum, and is well underway in deployment; what’s to follow ? If all goes well, 2009 will see Las Vegas, Grand Rapids, Atlanta, and Portland commercial launches as the first four commercial markets for Clearwire’s WiMAX service, primed to follow at the heels of the Xohm launches in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington D.C. in the fall of this year. The start of the WiMAX nationwide buildout is only months away.… Read the rest
