14 DAY TRIAL // It’s a common fact that ClearWire started to deploy WiMAX networks last year, and it seems that the company plans to extend its coverage over around 80 cities in the United States. Up until now, only Portland and Baltimore have seen WiMax wireless broadband connectivity, yet the services will come to more areas in the country in the course of this year and the next.
To be more precise, the company intends to deploy WiMAX over Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte (N.C), Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle in 2009, and then move to New York City, Boston, Washington D.C., Houston and San Francisco by the end of 2010. At the same time, ClearWire also says that it expects “nearly 100 mobile WiMAX devices – such as laptops, netbooks, handhelds, USBs and modems – by the end of the year.”
Unfortunately for ClearWire, WiMAX is not the only 4G technology that will be rolled-out in the US by the end of next year. As many of you might already know, Verizon is set to deploy a LTE (Long Term Evolution) network in 2010, which will make ClearWire's effort a little bit difficult, given the fact that a wide range of mobile phone makers and carriers have announced their support for the technology, the world's No 1 phone maker Nokia being among them.
At the same time, the development of LTE, also a 4G technology, is much easier than that of WiMAX. While the latter requires for a new network to be rolled-out, LTE allows carriers to only make upgrades to their existing WCDMA/HSPA networks. Given this fact, LTE will easily become a choice for operators, while WiMAX could be left aside.
ClearWire's efforts are sustained by Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks. Together, the companies have invested about $3.2 billion in ClearWire. For what it's worth, the company states that its network would be able to provide 2-4 megabits per second download speeds, as well as much faster peak rates. On the other hand, since the shift seems to be made towards LTE, WiMAX might soon prove to have a sealed fate, and Sprint, which supports the technology, might find itself alone on the market, especially if phone makers go for LTE.