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Back in April a university in Taiwan became the first school in the world to provide WiMAX to its campus and community, and now Liberty University in Virginia is aiming to do the same for Lynchburg.

Lynchburg Virgnia's Liberty University has partnered with Virginia School of the Arts, another local school, to create the Lynchburg Educational Broadband Joint Venture with hopes of bringing high-speed mobile WiMAX to the university and surrounding community. With long-awaited permission from the FCC, the Lynchburg Educational Broadband Joint Venture will allow communications companies to bid on leasing license channels currently owned by Liberty University and Virginia School of the Arts.

While Clearwire is currently the only US owner/operator of a WiMAX network (remember, Sprint and Comcast are MNVO's of Clearwire's service; they do not own their own networks), other companies may enter the bidding as well since the two schools are leasing the necessary license channels.

If Liberty University's plan pans out, this could prove to be an important precedent for future networks at other colleges. WiMAX has been promoted by many industry insiders as having great potential for providing wireless high-speed internet at the community level, and it will be exciting to see how the Lynchburg Educational Broadband Joint Venture fares.

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As we mentioned back in March, Clear plans to allow other providers, including Sprint and Comcast, to re-sell their Clear WiMAX service. This type of agreement is called an Mobile Network Virtual Operator (MNVO) agreement, and it is fairly common - for example, Virgin Mobile is an MNVO of Verizon (if you use Virgin Mobile for your cell phone service, you are actually using Verizon's network). Comcast has now officially launched their 4G WiMAX service, which they are calling "Comcast High-Speed 2go", and it is available in Portland starting for just $49.99/month for the first year.

Comcast's High-Speed 2go uses Clearwire's Clear WiMAX network, which has been up and running in Portland for several months (Clear also offers WiMAX in Atlanta and Las Vegas, but so far Comcast is only offering their High-Speed 2go in Portland). Comcast is offering the WiMAX service as part of a bundle deal along with their home cable internet service, and they also have an option of adding 3G service (through Sprint, of course, who owns a large portion of Clearwire), meaning Comcast customers in Portland have the unique option to sign up for cable, 3G, and 4G internet service all through one provider!

What do you think of this type of deal? Would you subscribe to 4G service through your cable internet provider? Discuss it on the 4G Forums!

Clearwire's Clear WiMAX service went live in Atlanta in the beginning of May, but the company is holding an "official launch party" at Atlanta Station today to celebrate the debut of the service. The Atlanta launch was announced in a full-page advertisement in yesterday's Atlanta Journal and Constitution paper in hopes of drawing attention to Clearwire's largest launch thus far (the Atlanta market is larger in area than either Portland or Las Vegas, the other two Clearwire markets):

Click for larger view of the Atlanta coverage map

What's next on the docket for Clearwire? Another belated launch party - for Las Vegas, which actually launched last week - this summer, followed by the launch of as-yet-unnamed additional markets before the end of the year. Clearwire's annual stockholder meeting will take place tomorrow, so let's cross our fingers that their 2009-2010 launch plans are discussed in more detail!

Discuss Clearwire's coverage in Atlanta on the 4G Forums

Clearwire has taken some flack from subscribers (and would-be subscribers) eager to use WiMAX in more locations than the flagship Portland market, but the addition of a couple more covered cities over the past couple months has made Clear a more viable option for more users. Las Vegas became the third city to offer Clear WiMAX service in the USA, and from the looks of the map (see above) it appears that Clearwire has done a nice job extending coverage to a fairly large section of the metro area - you won't have to be right in Harrah's to access the network.

With service now officially available in Las Vegas, Clearwire subscribers can now use their WiMAX modems in three markets: Portland, Atlanta, and Vegas (still no love for Baltimore, whose old XOHM network is still working but not compatible with Clearwire yet). With those three cities marked off their "to-do in 2009" list, Clearwire just needs to expand coverage to Honolulu, Charlotte, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Seattle in the next six months and they'll be right on schedule!

Discuss Clear in Las Vegas on the 4G Forums

From the "uh oh, is WiMAX is trouble?" files...

Intel announced this week that it will be ceasing production of their WiMAX Connection 2250 broadband interface chip and the WiMax Connection 2300R radio chip. They have taken their final order they estimate their final shipments to be fulfilled by September 2010.

This does NOT mean that they are exiting the WiMAX chip business, but it certainly is a bit disconcerting.
WiMAX has already encountered many a roadblock since becoming commercially available in the US late last year and it is unfortunate to see such a big player in the industry citing a lack of demand already.

Despite the fact that Sprint owns a large part of Clearwire and uses Clearwire's WiMAX network to provide their "Sprint 4G" service, Sprint does not yet offer 4G service in all the markets that have Clear. It doesn't make much sense, and is unfortunate for folks who might be interested in using Sprint's dual-mode U300 (an aircard that can connect to both Sprint's 3G and 4G networks) in more markets than just Baltimore.

Good news, though! Sprint has finally announced intentions to offer 4G in more areas in 2009 and 2010, and not surprisingly their rollout plan mirrors that of Clearwire (since they will use the same network). This year Sprint plans to add 4G service in Atlanta, Honolulu, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Portland, Fort Worth, and Seattle; 2010 will bring Sprint 4G to Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. A Sprint representative indicated that even more markets may be added in 2009 and 2010.

To go along with the expanded network, Sprint also plans to offer more 4G capable devices. In addition to the 3G/4G U300, they are planning to offer "a single-mode 4G data card, embedded laptops, a small-office-home-office broadband modem and a tri-mode phone" but it was unclear just when those devices will be released. 

AT&T issued a press release today promising big improvements to their 3G (which uses HSPA technology) network over the next two years, including plans to double the wireless spectrum and expand coverage to 20 additional metro areas. This news is of course making 3G iPhone and aircard users very happy campers, but the obvious downside is that it's very apparent that 3G remains and will continue to be AT&T's top priority for at least another two years while LTE sits on the back burner.

The press release didn't completely ignore LTE - it anecdotally mentioned that AT&T will "begin LTE trials in 2010, with deployment beginning in 2011". While improving their existing 3G network is certainly going to benefit many users, one wonders whether the monetary and time resources might be better spent working towards the 4G network that will someday replace 3G?

What do you think - is AT&T making a mistake to wait on LTE? Discuss this issue on the 4G Forums.