Network World conducted an interview with Clearwire chief commercial officer Mike Sievert. Sievert discussed many hot topics such as their plans for the rest of 2010, WiMAX 2 and current deployments. Sievert's answers to Network Worlds plethora will definitely be of great interest to anyone who is closely monitoring the direction for WiMAX - below are some highlights and quotes from the interview:
On where Clearwire current deployment stands
Clearwire currently covers 34 million points of presence (POP) as of last quarter. It's also commercially available in 28 different U.S. cities including Seattle, Honolulu and Maui. Network World also discussed Clearwire's plans for the duration of the year which is said to include launching CLEAR WiMAX service commercially in several more major cities by the end of the year including New York, San Francisco, Boston, Houston, Kansas City and Washington, DC.
On Clearwire Wholesale Partnerships
Like most carriers, Clearwire offers service through retail outlets both direct and indirect. However, Clearwire also wholesales its current line of services through partners such as Sprint, Comcast, and TimeWarner cable. "Our wholesale business is going through extraordinary growth right now", said Mike Sievert. "We ended up with more than 46,000 wholesale customers by the end of the of the fourth quarter last year and we're on pace to do significantly more that that this quarter. We want to be available to any company that wants to be an active player in the 4G space."
On plans beyond 2010
Sievert confirmed that Clearwire's current plans are to get their network built out as much as possible in 2010, and isn't looking too far into the future yet: "We certainly have aspirations to cover 200 million POPs, to be truly national and cover most major markets. However when the projects are complete for this year it will be the largest buildout completed by any wireless carrier in the US., so right now the focus is to complete that project."
On the future of WiMAX 2:
WiMAX is still a new technology, but of course folks are always interested in knowing what will come next. Sievert said the following about their future plans: "We're looking at a number of different technologies, including WiMAX 2. The nice thing is that we have an all-IP network now that will make it less capital-intensive to add new technologies to future networks. Current 3G legacy networks, on the other hand, will have to spend a lot more capital to upgrade their networks to IP. Clearwire is already one step ahead in that regard."
Sievert concluded by noting that Clearwire makes the process of moving to 4G comfortable for consumers, as they have partnerships with companies that consumers already have relationships with (Comcast, Time Warner, etc) - a factor he thinks will give them an edge over LTE.
