Clearwire is in a bit of a bind. Creating the nation’s, probably the world’s, largest WiMAX network wasn’t cheap. The airwaves needed to broadcast the signal, the towers to put up antennas, and the funds used to advertise that “4G is here” when that’s truly not the case, have put the company in a situation where they need to raise about $5 billion to keep on running. According to a story on Reuters, Clearwire is looking to dump some of their spectrum and are already in the second stage of auction involving AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
Considering Clearwire holds spectrum in the highly unattractive 2.5 GHz space, while both Verizon and AT&T have prime 700 MHz real estate, the only real operating “in need” of actual bandwidth is T-Mobile. They’re well on their way to expanding their 21 Mbps HSPA+ network to many of America’s largest markets, and have also confirmed that in 2011 they’re going to double that speed with dual channel support similar to what Telstra have done in Australia. But after that … nothing. They don’t have an LTE strategy, though they have been in talks with Clearwire in the past to try and invest a bit in their network.
Who is the loser here? Clearwire, who got a lot of flack from everyone about their decision to use a technology no one really cared about. They said “but but, we’re first!”, and no one really cares since many industries, especially in the field on consumer electronics, don’t really get too caught up on first mover advantage. It’s all about who does it the best, and with Verizon due to launch their LTE network by the end of this year, and cover as many people with LTE as are covered with 3G now by 2013, they’re going to be the operator that puts America back on the map for having high speed dependable infrastructure.
[Via: Phone Scoop]