Telecommunications tycoon Craig McCaw is getting into the fixed wireless game and he’s using the assets of Arlington-born Clearwire and NextNet, to do it, reports the Dallas Business Journal.
Clearwire, which supplies high-speed, wireless Internet access, was recently combined with a McCaw organization in Kirkland, Wash. McCaw has also purchased NextNet Wireless to help him assemble a powerful, national player in the growing fixed-wireless market. NextNet’s technology uses an OFDM radio not unlike 802.16 and have been used in big wireless deployments in Vancouver and Ottawa, Canada.
As is his custom, McCaw is filling the executive ranks of Clearwire with veterans of McCaw Cellular, the pioneering, Kirkland-based cellphone company that he sold to AT&T in 1994 for about $11.5 billion.
McCaw’s Nextel won the bidding at $144 million for MDS/ITFS spectrum that WorldCom (now MCI) put up for sale in bankruptcy court last year.
Another sleeper may be XO Communications. XO is the licensee of LMDS frequencies with the largest U.S footprint of fixed wireless spectrum, covering 95 percent of the population in the top 30 U.S. cities. It may be particularly well suited for backhaul - especially if low-cost 802.16-type equipment becomes available.
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