US WiMAX operator raises $US1 billion: but it's mobile WiMAX

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 July 2007 05:45

IT Industry - Strategy

Investors in the US have demonstrated their faith in WiMAX, providing a $US1 billion loan facility to Clearwire which is planning to rollout a nationwide WiMAX network, but it will be mobile WiMAX not the fixed WiMAX that Opel intends to use.

Clearwire was founded in 2003 by US cellular network pioneer, Craig McCaw, who sold McCaw Cellular to AT&T in 1994 for $US11.5 billion. Clearwie started out using a proprietary WiMAX-like technology and is reported to have around 200,000 US subscribers, mostly in small cities.

Backed by Intel and Motorola (which pumped in $US900 in equity in July 2006) Clearwire is proposing to move to mobile WiMAX and in May this year acquired all the 2.5GHz wireless broadband spectrum in the US previously owned or controlled by AT&T and the former BellSouth.

The company said at the time that "With this acquisition and assuming closing of other pending spectrum purchases, Clearwire’s US spectrum holdings...[cover] an estimated 223 million people with varying depths of spectrum." With spectrum in Europe, covering approximately 199 million people, Clearwire claims to hold "one of the world’s largest portfolios of next-generation wireless broadband spectrum in the frequency bands identified by the mobile WiMAX standard."

The company went public in March 2007 at which time Frost & Sullivan US analyst Gerry Purdy, was quoted saying: "If anybody can succeed at doing it, McCaw probably has the right technology, the right management team, and has got partners in the form of Intel and Motorola...You get a sense that this [mobile] WiMAX thing is probably real, it's important, and you've got a company that knows how to do this.