WiMax Backer Signals Eventual Jump To LTE Camp

A wireless Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the United States, Clearwire, has said it will eventually transition from a WiMax-based 4G network to an LTE (Long-Term Evolution) 4G network.

The news was revealed by Clearwire COO Erik Prusch in an interview with Cnet.

Using Clearwire technology, Sprint – which owns a 50-some-percent share of the company – launched its 4G network in 2008, years ahead of its competitors. While Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T are just now catching up, the types of 4G technology they’ve chosen – LTE and the LTE precursor HSPA+ – are expected, as Clearwire and Sprint know well, to ultimately be the leading 4G technologies worldwide.

LTE Future

“WiMax to date has been a very good technology choice for us,” Prusch said, according to the 19 May report. “We were able to take advantage of the speed to market before LTE was even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. But we recognise the ecosystem in the US will be larger for LTE than WiMax, so we are conscious of that.”

Clearwire has had funding issues for some time now. For the first quarter of this year, it reported revenue of $242 million (£150m) and added 1.8 million subscribers, but nonetheless reported a loss of $226.9 million (£141m). With $1.2 billion (£744m) of cash on hand, the company is feeling forced to pace its retail efforts, despite retail customers being responsible for the majority of its revenue.

Still, Clearwire will wait to make the transition to LTE, Prusch said, until the ecosystem and its technology are mature.

“We are technology agnostic,” he said. “We don’t believe that customers buy a technology. They buy fast and reliable access to a data network.”

Clearwire and Sprint rely heavily on one another, to a degree some analysts find problematic. While Sprint has struggled a bit to compete against the iPhone-wielding AT&T and Verizon, it has had to financially assist Clearwire as a means of looking out for its 4G network.

Spectrum Flexibility

Like Prusch, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has hinted that LTE is in Sprint’s future. Hesse told the Financial Times in July 2010 that Sprint was considering rolling out LTE alongside its WiMax technology.

“We have spectrum resources where we could add LTE if we choose to do that, on top of the WiMax network,” Hesse told FT. “The beauty of having a lot of spectrum is we have a lot of flexibility.”

In the same report, FT added that T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom had considered purchasing Sprint and merging it with T-Mobile, but ultimately decided against it, given that Sprint was invested in WiMax, while T-Mobile’s 4G roadmap had it moving from HSPA+ to LTE.