To do that, it will not only have to win a substantial number of subscribers but also make a limited amount of spectrum deliver promised data rates to the masses.

TRANSLATING SUCCESS

Clearwire is the latest wireless project of Craig McCaw, whose visionary idea of cellular as a nationwide service (as opposed to a bunch of essentially independent local operations) was a major factor in the explosive growth of the wireless industry. It is easy to anticipate that the same magic inevitably will touch WiMAX in general and Clearwire in particular, but one should be cautioned that McCaw also has authored – or at least participated in – a number of costly telecommunications ventures that went nowhere.

With 162,000 claimed subscribers in its current markets, at least Clearwire is a growing concern. It has licensed 2.5 GHz spectrum, which does not suffer quite the killer line-of-sight limitations of higher frequency bands, in most major market areas. With Intel and Motorola involved, the company appears to have the deep pockets that will be needed to fund growth and expansion if the service proves highly popular. But whatever the pedigree and however secure the funding, Clearwire still needs to demonstrate that wireless broadband service can compete with wire-borne technologies in the long run.

Reportedly, Clearwire's initial service offering in Seattle, as in its previous networks, uses a proprietary "pre-WiMAX" technology rather than the IEEE 802.16 standard generally associated with the term WiMAX. That in itself probably isn't a huge problem, as it should be fairly easy for Clearwire to get subscribers to upgrade when the time comes. If Clearwire and other WiMAX operators are to enjoy success, periodic upgrades will be necessary in order to wrest ever greater capacity from limited spectrum resources. As an example of this process, CDMA technology has undergone incremental enhancements over the years to the point that spectrum capacity of the latest version is well over double that of the original IS-95 standard.

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