Clearwire has announced that they plan to add LTE in addition to their existing WiMAX network, but will require approximately $600 million to do so. They've decided to make this move as most other countries have implemented LTE and offering dual services will give them greater flexibility for international travelers. Their initial LTE deployments will be in densely populated areas that are already covered with WiMAX to get the greatest ROI. Within their initial testing they believe they can provide between 50 to 90Mbps on average, to customers. The equipment that they'll be rolling out will also support LTE Advanced, but don't expect to be rolling out service for about six months.
The reason Clearwire will be able to offer both WiMAX and LTE is the amount of spectrum they currently hold. In most metropolitan areas they hold over 100Mhz of spectrum, which exceeds every other mobile operators holdings. They plan to start out by using 20Mhz for their LTE networks, twice what Verizon uses in most of their 4G LTE markets. They'll be able to use some of their existing base stations, wired backhaul and tower leases to provide the service to consumers. In the second quarter their pro forma revenue was up $293.7 million, up 151% from last years quarter. With growth like this they expect to have a positive cash flow by early next year, but still need to find a way to get the working capital to build out their LTE network.
