Clearwire has started offering WiMAX service in Philadelphia, which comes as a big surprise. Most of us thought they would launch in Dallas or Chicago before Philly:
“With the benefit of hindsight, it’s an easy guess as to why Philadelphia got moved up on the launch schedule — it is, after all, the corporate home town of Clearwire’s best reseller and investor buddy, Comcast. (Too bad it looks like the idea of Comcast having NBC content to push over WiMAX aren’t true.) Rumors and speculation aside, what is becoming clear is that Clearwire is doing a good job of following through on its 4G deployment schedule, even as its so-called bigger-pocket competitors like AT&T scale back on their wireless ambitions.”
Meanwhile, Clearwire announced that Alvarion will be supplying equipment for its WiMAX network in Spain. Analyst Paul Kapustka says that “since the network there will use spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band — unlike Clearwire’s U.S. markets, which use the 2.5 GHz band — there was probably room for Clearwire to negotiate with someone other than its current suppliers, without making anyone angry.”
You’ll note that WiMAX operators around the world do not use the same frequencies. In Europe, Russian WiMAX provider Yota uses 2.5 – 2.7 GHz, but other European operators use 3.5 GHz.
Related stories:
Yota Egg: portable mobile WiMAX to Wi-Fi converter
Worldmax launches WiMAX service in Amsterdam
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