Today Clearwire officially rolls out mobile WiMAX service in Las Vegas, serving approximately 1.7 million residents across 638 square miles. Las Vegas is the third major market that Clear has launched under its own name. Atlanta launched Clear’s Mobile WiMAX on June 16th while Portland launched Mobile WiMAX in January of this year. Sprint Nextel’s XOHM-branded Baltimore market is expected to come under Clear’s wing sometime this year. The company now has some 500,000 subscribers to their “4G” service.
Owners of Apple laptops will be able to connect to the CLEAR network using a USB modem beginning August 17 with the introduction of the Clear Connection Manager software for Mac. It will be available for download from clear.com. A dual-mode Clear 4G+ mobile USB service is expected to be available for Macs in Q4’09.
Also launching in August is the Samsung Mondi, a mobile WiMAX enabled handheld device that combines the abilities of a PC with the size and portability of a phone. Mondi is a WiFi/WiMAX device, not a phone. It provides connectivity for email, Microsoft Office and many other vertical business applications as well as web browsing and multimedia features. It features GPS Navigation from Route 66 with Preloaded Maps and 4GB of Internal Memory. Its web browser enables consumers to watch DivX content on the go.
Home internet service plans start at $20 per month, while mobile internet plans start at $30 per month, or customers can purchase a day pass for $10. The dual-mode 4G/3G plan is available for $80 per month, with a two-year service agreement.
Clear residential modems from Motorola, can be purchased for $79.99 or leased for just $4.99 monthly. Residential customers can also add in-home voice service with purchase of the Clear Voice Adapter for $15, and receive unlimited local and long distance service for $25 per month. The Clear Spot, a battery-powered WiFi hotspot, can connect to CLEAR’s mobile WiMAX network. The $140 device creates a personal Wi-Fi hotspot that travels with consumers within CLEAR’s mobile WiMAX service area.
Clear expects to launch WiMAX service in Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Seattle in 2009. Cities planned to launch in 2010 are New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The company expects to bring CLEAR to 80 markets covering up to 120 million people by the end of 2010. By 2010, Clearwire hopes to have 4.6 millon subs in the United States and close to 20 million subs by 2014.
Intel has poured nearly $2 billion into 18 WiMax companies in recent years. Other flagship WiMAX operators include:
- Japan’s UQ Communications launched commercial service on July 1 and plans to cover Japan in the next few years. UQ is the first major mobile WiMAX operator to use fractional frequency reuse, which can eliminate typical ‘3-frequency’ operation. UQ is the only company that has a nationwide approach for their 2.5 GHz spectrum and expects to have more than 90 percent population coverage by 2012. Partner cellco KDDI (with a 35% share), will start their LTE build-out in 2012.
- Russian Yota Mobile WiMAX network is now offering services in three regions, including Moscow and St Petersburg, and claims it is carrying more data already than all the cellcos combined. Yota’s WiMAX system is using Samsung base stations exclusively. Other WiMax networks are being launched in various regions in Russia by Enfortas, Synterra, Start-Telecom, Comstar-UTS, and Media-Net.
- The WiMAX Forum forecasts that India will have 19 million WiMAX subscribers by 2012, or 20% of the world’s WiMAX user base while Gartner says India will have 6.9 Million mobile and fixed WiMAX connections by the End of 2011. According to the WiMAX Forum, India’s spectrum auction will enable two 20 MHz blocks in both the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz bands. India’s largest telecoms operator, Bharti Airtel, with a 25% share of the wireless services market, has over 100 million subs. Indian state-owned operators, BSNL and MTNL, have had early access to 3.5 GHz WiMAX spectrum ahead of coming auctions in the 2.1 and 2.5 GHz bands. BSNL WiMAX is expanding throughout India’s fastest-growing telecom circles: Gujarat, Maharashstra and Goa, and Andhra Pradesh. Tata Communications (TCL) has signed up 50,000 subscribers for its fixed WiMAX service in the 3.3 GHz band.
- Korea Telecom is rolling out voice-over-WiBro this year. KT’s Wave 2 network is expected to start commercial operation in July while SK Telecom is targeting September. KT, which controls more than 90 percent of the fixed-line telephony market and about 44 percent of the broadband sector, had gathered about 206,000 customers for WiBro by the middle of 2008, while SK Telecom, the dominant cellular carrier, has a comparatively miniscule 2,000 WiBro subscribers. WiBro (now Mobile WiMAX) has been growing fast in South Korea. The country helped to define the Mobile standard and vendors like Samsung are based in South Korea.
- The National Communications Commission (NCC), Taiwan’s regulator, has given the go ahead to VMAX to start rolling out WiMAX base stations and related infrastructure in its licensed areas in the island’s northern region, with full commercial launch in Q3 of this year. The Taiwanese operator is deploying about 300 WiMAX base stations from Alvarion and Samsung with an initial budget of $29m. VMAX is expected to use a total of 1,200 base stations in the planned three-stage project. Five of Taiwan’s licensed WiMAX operators – Global Mobile, First International Telecom (Fitel), Vmax Telecom, Tatung Telecom and Far EasTone Telecommunications (FET) are rolling out WiMAX services in Taiwan.
- The Battle for Britain is waiting for spectrum. British regulatory body Office of Communications (Ofcom) is due to open up spectrum in the 2.5GHz later this year. But WiMax hopefuls in the U.K., such as British Telecom, may find themselves shut out of the 2.6 GHz auction, says Unstrung. Ofcom will auction 2010-2025 MHz and 2500-2690 MHz bands (known as 2.6 GHz) on a technology and service neutral basis, but five cellular operators are potentially bidding to hoard WiMax spectrum. The Mobile WiMAX Acceleration Group, a consortium of British telecom and media companies, is committed to assembling a multi-vendor end-to-end supply chain to deploy a commercially viable Mobile WiMAX solution in the UK for CCTV monitoring and public safety.
- London-based Augere wants to make broadband Internet access available to 1 billion people within five years, supplying services at US$10 a month. The company’s mission is to bring broadband internet to the 80 percent of the world’s population where it is currently out of reach, reports the Financial Times. Mobile phone operators in emerging markets often offer only basic phone and text services, rather than broadband internet access, explains Augere.
Clearwire USA continues to be the top BWA/WIMAX operator in terms of the number of subscribers. The operator had 500,000 subscribers at the end of Q1 2009, an increase of 5% compared with 475,000 reported in Q4 2008. According to the latest quarterly report from Maravedis, approximately 400,000 BWA/WiMAX subscribers and 50 million new active 3G subscribers were added globally in Q1 2009. The GSM Association says the US is expected to have nearly 37 million HSPA connections by September, 2009, with some 150 million HSPA connections expected worldwide by end of the summer. Parks Associates guesses the number of households worldwide with broadband will approach 650 million by 2013.
China had 627.3 million mobile-phone users at the end of October. India is now the second largest wireless market in the world. India’s mobile operators added 11.59 million subscribers in May, taking the country’s total to 415.25 million, according to the latest figures from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The United States is the 3rd largest wireless market, according to the CTIA. The CTIA reports there were about 270 million total wireless subscribers in the USA at the end of 2008, with about 87% penetration. They include Verizon (86M), AT&T (78M), Sprint (49M) and T-Mobile USA (30M) which total about 243 million.
Related Dailywireless articles include; Clearwire’s Launch Party in Portland, Clearwire Speedtest in Portland, Clearwire Launches in Portland, Oregon, Xohm Marks the Spot in Baltimore, India Sets 3G Auction Price Higher, WiMax: East Meets West, China Mobile: Slow TD-SCDMA Sales.
