MuniWireless

Apparently it’s no longer “premature” to break out mobile WiMAX subscriber numbers — at least now that there is an impressive number to talk about. According to its third-quarter financials press release, WiMAX provider Clearwire signed up 49,000 users for its new, mobile “4G” WiMAX service during the third fiscal quarter, a big, important leap from the embarrassing number of 12,000 net new adds for Q2.

Granted, Clearwire did have the helping hand of a lot of new markets in Q3…

When we heard Clearwire’s Hope Cochran was a no-show at last week’s Open Mobile Summit due to a last-minute trip to New York, we knew something was up — and since Cochran is Clearwire’s senior VP for finance and treasury, it (apparently) had something to do with money talks, specifically the kind that helps you keep building those costly consumer wireless networks.

On Sunday the Wall Street Journal was reporting that Sprint, Intel, Comcast and others will soon be investing another…

When WiMAX providers talk about the technology’s attributes, cellular-like mobility is usually near the top of the list. But for many business users WiMAX’s simple portability — the ability to pick up and move your broadband connection — may prove to be a more powerful economic and operational lure, the kind of money-saving, hassle-free attribute that gets CIOs interested and gets POs signed.

The power and potential attractiveness of WiMAX’s simple portability was one of the surprising themes we picked up…

In what seems to be now a standard practice, the folks at Clearwire are launching markets by first making them available on their coverage map page, followed by “official” launches a month or so later. We are not sure of what the difference is — to us, a market is “officially” live when you start charging money for services. Anyway even though you can order services today, those new markets we told you about on Saturday will “officially” be open…

Our quick impression from a full day and a half spent inside the Clearwire bubble, at the company’s “official” market-launching event in Las Vegas on July 21: The nascent national WiMAX-providing company seems well past its sometimes-confusing stumbles of 2008 and into full execution mode, showing it can put on a confident, coherent local event even as its overall marketing, pricing and demographic messages remain somewhat a work in progress.

The ability to stage a fairly seamless, fun and informative day…

Talk about your soft launch — nothing says the genteel South like starting to sell WiMax services without so much as a by-your-leave. Looks like our pals over at WiMax.com saw what we discovered surfing around the Clear.com site — Clearwire has added coverage maps for Atlanta, much of which it labels as “now serving.” Just call it WiMax for all y’all.

No official press release yet on the Clearwire site, but we will keep our eyes open and relay once…