* Will Sprint-Clearwire split impact the future of interoperability?
I would seem to be living under a rock if I didn’t mention Sprint Nextel and Clearwire’s recent decision to scrap a partnership that would have created a nationwide mobile WiMAX network.
The value of a network increases proportionately with the number of nodes connected to it. Reliability, speed, service quality and useful network applications are all important, too. But if you can only get a network service in Timbuktu (and don’t have operations in West Africa), it doesn’t really matter how extraordinary that service is.
To me, that’s where the disappointment in the dissolution of the Sprint-Clearwire partnership lies. That deal, announced in July, would have paired the companies in providing WiMAX coverage to about 100 million people by late 2008. Many of the enterprise IT managers I’ve talked to over the past few years have expressed hope that WiMAX would represent a consistent broadband mobile network technology that would work with the same user equipment from geography to geography — unlike today’s fragmented CDMA- and GSM-based networks, which require different types of access equipment and service subscriptions.
Getting a new network service up, working reliably, and ubiquitously available is no small feat. So interoperator partnerships are a boon to accelerating the coverage and interoperability of services. In addition, Sprint and Clearwire were planning to adopt an “open” approach to the network, allowing for any device and any application to run on it.
Granted, the forthcoming 700MHz auctions are intended to allow for some of this openness. But, wireless consultant Andy Seybold, principal of Andrew Seybold Inc., said at a recent wireless conference in Silicon Valley, “If the FCC doesn’t get the [minimum] $4.6 billion [it seeks] for the C block with open access, that 22MHz of nationwide spectrum goes back out to bid without open access rules.”
That’s a scary thought. Let’s hope that other industry players committed to WiMAX — Intel, Nokia, Samsung — step up to the financial-backing plate to help Clearwire forge ahead with its WiMAX network buildout.
