Clearwire rolls out service in two more markets, expands Baltimore coverage

Clearwire Corp. officially launched service in Kansas City and Washington, D.C., and expanded service in Baltimore. The WiMAX operator is offering an online-only mobile Internet promotion with plans starting at $15 per month for two months after a $50 service credit in all three markets.
In Baltimore, Clearwire said it expanded to service to now cover 1.7 million people. The coverage area now goes as far north as Bel Air, as far south as Annapolis and west to Owings Mills and east to Dundalk and Essex. Dean Young has been named general manager for the market.
In central Washington, D.C., Clearwire said it covers nearly 1 million people, including the communities of Chevy Chase and Silver Spring, Md., Alexandria and Falls Church, Va., as well as College Park, Md. Jeff Fugate has been named general manager for the area.
Clearwire also launched service in partner Sprint Nextel Corp.’s headquarters of Kansas City, Kan., and neighboring Missouri, where its service covers more than 1.1 million people. The company named John O’Donnellas GM for the region.
Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow said in its first-quarter operating results that it is on track to cover 120 million potential customers by the end of the year. The carrier plans to turn on service in St. Louis, Mo., Salt Lake City, Utah, and Nashville, Tenn., yet this summer.
Clearwire has said that its WiMAX deployment has allowed it a first-to-market 4G advantage, although the rhetoric over 4G continues to intensify, with T-Mobile USA Inc. announcing what it calls 4G speeds on its HSPA+ network as it rolls out 21 Megabit per second technology in some Northeast markets, while Verizon Wireless plans to cover 100 million pops by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, amid speculation that Clearwire will shift to LTE technology eventually, research company WiseHarbor just released a report that says WiMAX sales will peak by 2015, as the introduction of TD-LTE service will spur the demise of WiMAX technology. “ Whereas WiMAX has made significant commercial progress by occupying the unpaired spectrum that tends to be much cheaper than the paired spectrum used for CDMA-based technologies including EV-DO and HSPA, TD-LTE will eclipse WiMAX by prevailing in the use of unpaired spectrum as well as the paired spectrum already employed commercially by LTE. Commitment to TD-LTE by China Mobile in particular and significant commonalities between LTE technologies and manufactured products with TDD and FDD modes will marginalize WiMAX in the marketplace over the next few years.”