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June 2, 2010

Clearwire said this morning that it has finally launched its WiMAX service in Kansas City and Washington, D.C., and has expanded the service in Baltimore as well.

The mobile operator is offering an online-only mobile Web promotion with plans starting at $15 a month for two months after a $50 service credit in all 3 markets.

In central Washington, Clearwire said it will cover about one million wireless users, including some communities in Chevy Chase and Silver Spring, Md., Alexandria and Falls Church, Va., as well as College Park, Md.

Jeff Fugate of Clearwire has been named general manager for the area.

The WiMAX service provider has also launched its service in Sprint Nextel's headquarters of Kansas City, Kan., and neighboring Missouri, where its service covers over 1.1 million users.

The company named John O'Donnellas as general manager for the region.

While all of this is happening, and amid some speculation that Clearwire will shift to LTE technology eventually, research company WiseHarbor just released a report that says WiMAX sales will peak by 2015, as the introduction of TD-LTE service will spur the demise of WiMAX technology.

"Whereas WiMAX has made significant commercial progress by occupying the unpaired spectrum that tends to be much cheaper than the paired spectrum used for CDMA-based technologies including EV-DO and HSPA, TD-LTE will eclipse WiMAX by prevailing in the use of unpaired spectrum as well as the paired spectrum already employed commercially by LTE," the report says.

In Baltimore, Clearwire said it expanded its service to now cover about 1.7 million wireless users. The coverage area now goes as far north as Bel Air, as far south as Annapolis and west to Owings Mills and east to Dundalk and Essex, Md.

Clearwire's Dean Young has been named general manager for that market.

Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow said in its first-quarter operating results that it is on track to cover 120 million potential customers by the end of 2010.

The wireless carrier plans to turn on service in St. Louis, Mo., Salt Lake City, Utah, and Nashville, Tenn. in mid-July.

Clearwire added that its WiMAX deployment has allowed it a first-to-market 4G advantage, although the rhetoric over 4G continues to intensify with T-Mobile USA announcing what it calls 4G speeds on its HSPA+ network as it rolls out 21 Megabit per second technology in some Northeast markets.

Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless plans to cover 100 million pops by the end of 2010, the company said last week.

Last week, T-Mobile USA said it is continuing to pressure larger wireless carriers by rolling out its HSPA+ network in a number of densely populated markets in the Northeast, including New York City, parts of New Jersey, areas of upstate New York, Connecticut and Providence, R.I., as well as in Memphis, Tenn. and Las Vegas, Nevada.

And there appears to be no end in sight as to what lenghts the small mobile operator is willing to go to make this happen faster.

The newly available markets join previous launches in Philadelphia and the Washington, D.C. area. In all, T-Mobile says the 21 megabit per second version of the HSPA+ standard now covers more than 30 million potential customers with plans to cover up to 100 large metro areas and 185 million pops by the end of 2010.

The wireless carrier had previously announced its HSPA+ plans at the CTIA trade show in March where it showed off a USB modem compatible with its enhanced network. At that time, speed tests using the device on a laptop computer showed download speeds of around 8 Mbps and upload speeds of around 2.5 Mbps, both comparable to what some of its larger competitors have been touting for their so-called 4G networks.

AT&T announced last week that it was updating its current HSPA service with the 14.4 Mbps version of the HSPA+ standard beginning later this year on its way to launching LTE services beginning next year.

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Source: Clearwire Corp.