A top Clearwire Inc. official said the national WiMax high-speed wireless network market will grow in 2009, although details on when and where are still being discussed.
A range of new laptops and mini-laptops that are WiMax-ready will be announced during the year, further adding to the promise for WiMax, said Barry West , president and chief architect for Clearwire Inc. He spoke in an interview at International CES on Thursday, four days after WiMax was unveiled under the Clear brand in Portland, Ore.
“Embedded WiMax will be in all kinds of devices,” West said, noting that Clearwire might work with Cisco Systems Inc. to embed WiMax into products that work on the Clearwire network. Cisco, which announced a push into home computing products at CES , has already invested in WiMax products outside the U.S. but they don’t Clearwire.
“WiMax will be with us for a long time, but the big question is how strongly, and what is the time frame,” West added. “We still have time-to-market advantage over LTE,” or Long Term Evolution, another high-speed wireless technology that’s supported by many carriers globally.
West said Clearwire’s new board needs to agree on where to build and open new network markets, now that Baltimore and Portland have launched. A network in Chicago is half-way built, but a timetable for completion has not been announced. Clearwire, a joint venture of Sprint Nextel Inc., Clearwire, Intel and three cable companies is converting pre-WiMax mobile broadband services to WiMax in 46 markets, but has not announced which will be completed next. Sprint was building out Chicago, Washington, Boston and Dallas-Fort Worth under the brand name of Xohm before the joint venture was completed in December , but West would not discuss plans for those cities. Under the joint venture, WiMax will be marketed under the brand name “Clear.”
The integration of Xohm and Clearwire personnel has gone smoothly, but West said there have “been some differences in the way we build networks.” He did not elaborate but said the culture between Xohm and Clearwire workers is similar and is “very encouraging.”
Some analysts have questioned how well WiMax will catch on and noted that Nokia has decided to stop selling its N810 WiMax mini computer, possible in part due to concerns over the future of WiMax.
But one Intel Corp. official said the N810 might have suffered from price and performance issues. That official, Julie Coppernoll, director of marketing for WiMax programs at Intel Corp., said the chip maker is still solidly behind WiMax and predicted that Nokia would make more WiMax devices, along with other device makers.
“Intel believes in the business model of Wimax,” she said.
Coppernoll said she expect Clearwire will announce some buildout plans by the end of January. She said a factor in making decisions about the buildout is whether it makes sense to completely finish one market before starting another, or to leave it nearly finished before investing in others.
