Official Sprint/Clearwire Details Out

By Glenn Fleishman

The press release ships: The new $14.5b (estimated) joint venture between Clearwire and Sprint will be called Clearwire. That’s another ego win on top of the financial win for one Mister Craig McCaw. Clearwire “2” will be headed by current CEO Ben Wolff, and the president will be Sprint’s very smart CTO and mobile broadband chief Barry West. They’ll headquarter in Kirkland, Wash., with R&D in Herndon, Virg. Sprint will own 51 percent, Clearwire 27 percent, and the new investors 22 percent. Their new announced plan is to pass 120 to 140m people by 2010, which is fairly modest, but Sprint will be retaining its current 3G business. Clearwire, Sprint, and all the cable investors announced 3G and 4G sales deals that will allow all partners to resell all 3G and 4G services. That was apparently an earlier missing piece for cable operators, who didn’t want to invest in a service that wouldn’t be rolled out across their entire territories for some time.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:44 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: 2.5 GHz, Mobile WiMax, financial, launches | Comments (0)

Sprint, Clearwire in Imminent $12b Deal

By Glenn Fleishman

Finally: The Wall Street Journal reports that a joint venture is almost ready to announce that will combine Clearwire with Sprint’s wireless broadband division in a $12b company that will receive an infusion of $3.2b from outside firms, including Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Google. The deal could be announced tomorrow. The cable involvement is clear: Cable providers may have a path to a 50 Mbps broadband vision (a standard that’s rolling out now), but they need mobile partners for data and voice, and Sprint has been that partner for the four big MSO (multiple system operators). This deal would validate the WiMax approach, and ensure that a national network would be built with enough spectrum in each market to provide the greatest possible bandwidth. It would be yet another win for Craig McCaw, of course, the man who essentially dictates through his ability to be smart ahead of the market what wireless voice and broadband will look like tomorrow, always tomorrow.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:34 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: 2.5 GHz, Mobile WiMax, competitive landscape, deals, financial | Comments (0)

Sprint WiMax Head Says His Tech Here, Now, Works

By Glenn Fleishman

Sprint’s Xohm division head Barry West tells the Wireless Communications Association that WiMax is real: He points out that critics that are adopting LTE (Long Term Evolution) are signing on to a standard that won’t be deployed for some time (2 to 4 years, depending on the firm and what you believe).

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:26 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Mobile WiMax, hype, launch plans | Comments (0)

Mobile WiMax Profile for Korean Frequencies First for Certification

By Glenn Fleishman

The WiMax Forum certifies first mobile WiMax products: However, they’re all for the 2.3 GHz profile, used in South Korea, not the 2.5 GHz profile which will be used by Sprint Nextel and Clearwire in the US, nor the 3.5 GHz profile used in Europe and beyond. Eight devices were certified. Certification for devices using 2.5 GHz is coming later this year.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:07 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: 2.3 GHz, Mobile WiMax, Standards | Comments (0)

Sprint Xohm Network Delayed; Backhaul the Issue

By Glenn Fleishman

Sprint pushes back its WiMax network launch: The production version of the network, currently in trials, won’t launch until the summer at earliest in their first markets. Unstrung is saying that backhaul to WiMax base station sites is the issue, not the underlying technology. Which I have to say makes sense, given that a fair amount of the technology is actively in production.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 11:50 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Mobile WiMax, Trials, launch plans | Comments (0)

Nokia Offers N810 Tablet with WiMax

By Glenn Fleishman

Nokia demoed its N810 tablet with embedded WiMax: The latest version of their N800-series tablets will ship when Sprint Nextel’s Xohm service launches later this quarter. The current similar tablet runs $440, IDG News Service notes, but pricing for this model hasn’t been set. Nokia provided an interesting detail: they expect 2 to 4 Mbps of average speed from Xohm, with 10 Mbps peaks. Those numbers haven’t been talked about much pre-launch.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:35 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Hardware | Comments (0)

Motorola Splits Handsets into Separate Firm

By Glenn Fleishman

Motorola bows to shareholder pressure, splits firm: The company will divide into two pieces in what Motorola hopes will be tax free to shareholders. One company will take the handset operations, which have languished; the other, enterprise, modem, and set-top boxes. This puts WiMax in the “good” company, the one that has a lot of potential to grow into a new international market, as well as continuing their sales of Canopy and fixed WiMax gear. The handset business would also encompass WiMax embedded into phones, but it’s likely a smaller part of Motorola’s WiMax portfolio.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:34 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Industry News, deals, financial | Comments (0)

Sprint, Clearwire May Form Venture with Comcast, Time Warner

By Glenn Fleishman

Odd pairing of firms might bring WiMax to fruition: The Wall Street Journal is reporting this evening that Comcast and Time Warner might fund a joint venture of Sprint Nextel and Clearwire that would roll out a national WiMax network. The Journal says the two telcos have been trying to raise $3b in recent months towards the deployment. Intel, Google, and a smaller cable operator would also contribute; Comcast and Intel would each invest $1b in the current proposal. The cable firms would gain both ownership and wholesale access for resale. The article notes that cable firms have had a muddled strategy for wireless investment and service, even as they’ve spent money ($2b on licenses in 2006, with nothing deployed) and pursued partnerships. What the Journal doesn’t note specifically is that wireless can often be used as an adjunct to obtain and supplement customers in areas where you can’t provide them primary service. Cable operators would prefer to use their existing plant to serve customers, but with WiMax, it’s possible they could still bring data, voice, and some video to markets within their territories but outside or at the limit of their plants.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:26 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: deals, financial | Comments (0)

Australian WiMax Operator Trashes WiMax Performance

By Glenn Fleishman

First WiMax operator in Australia, Buzz Broadband, says tech vastly underdelivered: I’m too far away from the action to know how much of this is a) accurate and b) accurately reported (no offense). At WiMax conference in Bangkok last week, CEO Garth Freeman apparently slammed distance, throughput, latency, and reliability. A year ago, he extolled his early deployment of Airspan equipment. Another Airspan customer in Australia cited in the article, finds great performance at distance. It may be that this fellow is generalizing from a specific case; his firm is now moving to “wireless DOCSIS” (cable-style access over 3.5 GHz) and TD-CDMA (over 1.9 GHz).

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:08 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: hype | Comments (1)

Intel Expects Third of Ultramobile PCs to Have Wi-Fi, WiMax

By Glenn Fleishman

Intel’s Atom Centrino platform will push out a lot of ultramobile PCs (UMPCs) with WiMax side by side with Wi-Fi: A third of the UMPCs will sport Wi-Fi and WiMax, while half will pair Wi-Fi with HSPA, the GSM 3G standard. It’s unclear what the sales of this new generations of devices will be; UMPCs haven’t lit up as a category so far. These new UMPCs use a chip designed specifically for the needs of this smarter-than-a-smartphone device; they’re due out later this year.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 8:27 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: launches | Comments (0)

Tata’s Indian Launch of WiMax Services Slated

By Glenn Fleishman

Indian firm Tata plans 115 cities covered by WiMax by 2009: The firm has 10 cities covered with Wi-Fi and 5,000 consumer and business customers. The company is awfully ambitious. They’ve reportedly invested $100m so far, with $500m planned over four years. They are looking for 50m subscribers, perhaps a reasonable number in a country with a highly inconsistent wired infrastructure and over 1b inhabitants. So far, only 3.2m households subscribe to broadband; business numbers weren’t noted. I have seen a lot of ambitious announcements over the years, and very very few of them turn into deployments of any real scale, or any deployment at all. The money committed so far is serious, however, and Tata could leverage their network into a real boost for the entire country, where cell phones are ubiquitous because they leverage services that aren’t available with fixed computers.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:41 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: international, launch plans | Comments (0)

WiMax Adds 700 MHz Profile

By Glenn Fleishman

Key addition by WiMax will make it possible for 700 MHz licenseholders to deploy WiMax: There’s been some debate over what kind of radio technology could be deployed in 700 MHz; Alan Andrews wrote up his analysis, and found that few specs that are deployed or in the process work for the amount of spectrum involved. That’s changed as of yesterday, with the WiMax Forum announcing a plan to create a roadmap—yes, that’s not precisely the same as having a roadmap—for a 700 MHz WiMax profile.

Having a profile means that manufacturers can work to a common spec, chipmakers can develop around a single set of ideas, and devices can be certified as compliant, which allows operators to purchase gear without having to engage in their own extensive and expensive testing. (They’ll still test, but this lowers the bar considerably, as they can examine networks that are already built if they arrive late to the party.)

I imagine this will take a couple years to reach full fruition, which is the timeline for real deployment in 700 MHz in the U.S., too.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 10:15 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: 700 MHz, future technologies | Comments (1)

Sprint, Clearwire Joint Venture under Discussion

By Glenn Fleishman

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint Nextel might bring in Google, Intel, Best Buy for Clearwire joint venture: Such a deal would make new Sprint CEO Dan Hesse’s job easier, reducing capital requirements through outside investors, reducing its demands on his time, and reducing the firm’s exposure.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:48 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: financial | Comments (0)

WiMax Launch in Wisconsin First in Nation with Voice, Data

By Glenn Fleishman

Madison, Wisc., gets one of first full-scale, full-on WiMax deployments: TDS Telecom (1.2m voice lines, 171K DSL lines), a sister company with US Cellular (6m customers, 26 states), rolls out licensed mobile WiMax, albeit in a fixed configuration. The service covers 55,000 households and 10,000 businesses in Madison with service at up to 6 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. The combination of voice and data makes this a first in the U.S., although there are other early WiMax data networks deployed.

Residential service is $50/mo. for 2 Mbps symmetrical with phone service, $55 for 4 Mbps, and $60 for 6 Mbps. Dropping phone service cuts $5 per month, and there’s a $10/mo. bundle discount for the first three months. Business service starts at $129/mo. based on contract length. The WiMax receiver will have a two-hour continuously charged battery backup to preserve voice and data during brief power outages. No mention is made of setup costs or minimum residential service term commitments in the pricing document.

They have seven towers deployed, although the precise number in use is a little confusing: a map shows five running, two still in progress, while the press release mentions six towers at one point and seven at another. Each tower has a two-mile radius of coverage, they say, while their licensed are will allow them a total 35 mile radius around Madison. They’re using Alvarion 802.16e 4Motion equipment, but in a fixed not mobile configuration at launch; the hardware is upgradable later to seamless handoffs.

The company’s press release says that service installation requires a visit from a technician. This is typically the case with all new broadband. When I had DSL installed by then-US West in 1997, it meant a truckroll. Just a couple years later, self-install was the name of the game. The rule in telcos—that I read in a DSL textbook, of all places—is that services have to move to 95 percent self-install, 5 percent truckroll, at worst to become profitable and correctly priced offerings.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:08 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: 2.5 GHz, 802.16-2005 (16e), Mobile WiMax, launches | Comments (0)

Sprint Launches Xohm Mobile WiMax Service Next Week

By Glenn Fleishman

Network World is reporting that businesses will be able to buy the unmarketed service in three cities starting on Tuesday, 15-Jan.: The three cities are Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Offerings will be for businesses only. Pricing isn’t noted. Full-scale commercial deployment comes later in 2008.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 9:56 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: Mobile WiMax, launches | Comments (0)

Concerns Aired about Lack of Mobile WiMax Consumer Gear Near Launch

By Glenn Fleishman

Even though you can’t use a mobile WiMax network in the U.S. today, analysts are concerned about the lack of hardware: The first production networks are slated to launch in weeks and months, and the Associated Press says only a CPE (home adapter) from Zyxel and a PC Card from ZTE are available. Motorola told me some weeks ago their CPEs would be available in small quantities at launch, moving to mass production during 2008; I’m not sure why they didn’t ramp up in preparation, and they’re not mentioned in this article.

A few laptops and tablet PCs will include WiMax, including the Asus Eee ($1000, 2nd half 2008), OQO (no date or price), and a Nokia tablet (sometime in 2008, no price).

Given the small initial audience that will subscribe, and the newness of the technology, it’s not strange to have so few items, but I would have thought Sprint would have ensured a few CPE models were ready. This article may understate what will actually be available.

Sprint’s strategy is to allow consumers to buy any compatible device and then pay a fee to use it on the network. Prices haven’t yet been set for network service.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 7:59 AM | Permanent Link | Categories: CPEs, Hardware, Mobile WiMax, launch plans | Comments (1)

Sprint Nextel Says WiMax on Track

By Glenn Fleishman

Nancy Gohring reports from the Consumer Electronics Show that Sprint maintains all is well in WiMax deployment: The firm said to a “small audience” at CES that they are right where they said they would be from a timing perspective. The company’s CTO, Barry West, said that the firm chose mobile WiMax over CDMA due to CDMA’s higher computational cost—and thus equipment cost—when handling larger swaths of spectrum. He also reaffirmed the network’s openness: any WiMax device a consumer buys will be allowed to run on the network.

A senior VP at Motorola noted that Motorola is involved in 60 WiMax trials worldwide, and Intel’s WiMax lead also said that “WiMax is bigger than Sprint.” True, but Sprint and Clearwire have the most scale committed anywhere in the world, and most of the rest of the world is involved in trials, not committed deployments. If they can’t build it here, they may not be able to build it anywhere, and the fortunes of several companies tumble alongside.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:53 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Industry News, hype, launch plans | Comments (0)

Sprint Nextel Soft Launches WiMax for Testing in Three Cities

By Glenn Fleishman

Sprint Nextel will light up mobile WiMax in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., initially limited to company employees for testing: Within a few days, the network will go live in the downtowns of those three cities, and then extend outwards based on where high usage is already found for cell data networks. Customer trial start in first quarter 2008, and full commercial services in the second quarter. This is an important milestone given other uncertainties about Sprint’s future.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 1:20 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Mobile WiMax, Trials, launch plans | Comments (0)

Sprint Turns Down SK Telecom, Private Equity Investment

By Glenn Fleishman

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint Nextel said no to $5b and a return of Nextel’s CEO from SK Telecom, Providence Equity Partners: The investment would have been in the form of convertible securities at a 20 to 30 percent premium over Sprint’s current stock price, and would have carried the return of Tim Donohue, who had headed Nextel when it was acquired by Sprint, and was chairman until 2005. The combined firm is worth slightly more than Nextel’s value when acquired, but Sprint has also sold some assets, notably its landline division.

SK Telecom is working on its own WiMax network, with the compatible WiBro flavor deployed (but with few customers) in South Korea. It also has an interest in its former division SK Teletech (now SKY), which makes advanced CDMA handsets that would work on Sprint’s network.

Further, SK Telecom is now the majority partner in the joint venture with EarthLink called Helio, which brings those selfsame advanced handsets into the hands of American youth (primarily) as an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) buying most or perhaps all its minutes and data transfer from…Sprint Nextel.

The Sprint board said no, and declined a face-to-face, even.

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 3:44 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: Mobile WiMax, WiBro, financial | Comments (1)

Clearwire’s PC Card: Awfully Fast, Good in Seattle

By Glenn Fleishman

A few days of testing with Clearwire’s new PC Card offering leaves me optimistic about mobile WiMax: While the card uses Expedience, the pre-WiMax offering that Clearwire’s former hardware division uses for all its equipment, I saw performance higher than using any other form of wireless networking except Wi-Fi in a fixed indoor location in my testing. I drove around Seattle and used the card in a car, with a booster, without, and in indoor locations. In most cases, I saw at or near the top rate. With the included external antenna, I was able to get over 1.6 Mbps downstream. Upstream rates are, as promised, about 256 Kbps or slower, and that’s something they need to improve.

With full-on, true mobile WiMax expected to deliver substantially higher rates for mobile and nomadic purposes, it’s possible Clearwire has a winner. Read my full review for how I expect that to play out and more detail about how the card works. (The review appears as part of a series of items I’m writing for a group blog on holiday gift gadgets.)

Posted by Glenn Fleishman at 2:52 PM | Permanent Link | Categories: 2.5 GHz, Hardware, Mobile WiMax | Comments (0)