WCA: Clearwire to Launch PC Card

WiMAX provider Clearwire Corp. will launch a PC card for laptops late in the third quarter or in the fourth quarter this year, with embedded mobile devices to follow in 2008, significantly expanding its service beyond the current fixed/portable 802.16d services it now provides via a residential gateway.

"We are building a network that is doing for the Internet what the cellular industry did for voice," Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff said at WCA 2007 in his first major speech since becoming sole CEO in January, nabbing AT&T Inc.'s 2.5Mhz spectrum at auction and going public a few weeks ago. During the keynote at the conference, Wolff said that personal broadband based on the 802.16e standard is the future and stressed that Clearwire is well-positioned for what he called a "defining moment" in communications.

Comparing the current offering to the brick cell phones and car phones of the 1980s and early 1990s, Wolff said Clearwire will continue its approach of building out regional clusters of service with an eye to the next era of mobile WiMAX. "The best is still yet to come," he said.

The PC card will be faster than 3G offers, he said, delivering broadband at 1mbps to 1.5mbps. It will cost users $49.99 to $59.99 per month for the service.

As for Clearwire's potential to be a thorn in the side of mobile and incumbent operators, Wolff said the company isn't planning a triple-play offering despite its plans to expand a residential VoIP service ("People often pay for services they don't want") but noted that WiMAX is likely to beat that other 4G technology, LTE.

"We could assume these two technologies will get to the same place over time," he said. "But [you need spectrum]. If you're still using narrow channels without depth, you can't compete no matter how good the technology is."

Clearwire Corp. www.clearwire.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines