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Clearwire and Telecom Italia win latest mobile broadband laurels

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 22 July, 2009

READ MORE: Clearwire | Broadband

Operators continue to enhance their mobile broadband networks to cash in on the netbook/tablet boom - on the WiMAX front, Clearwire has gone live in another market, Las Vegas, this week; while Telecom Italia is the latest to move the HSPA goalposts once more with a 28Mbps deployment in Rome.

Clearwire had already soft launched its Las Vegas service last month but officially went live yesterday. It promised the "superfast mobile internet experience" of a home connection "anywhere around town or on the go". Clearwire is becoming more aggressive about its speed promises too, having complained recently that, while it focused its literature on average performance, competitors with slower 3G networks marketed peak speeds. The Las Vegas statements promise peak download rates of more than 10Mbps and averages of 3Mbps to 6Mbps - the latter far higher than current 3G+ systems in the US.

Clearwire now has live services based on Mobile WiMAX in four cities, plus its legacy markets based on proprietary technology. As well as its own branded 'Clear' offering, it has MVNO deals with Sprint and three cablecos, all of which are also shareholders - so far, Sprint and Comcast have gone live. The former markets the service as 'Sprint 4G' and this is currently available in Baltimore (a city originally built out by Sprint Xohm before this was merged into the Clearwire joint venture) with dual-mode devices. Sprint now plans to launch its offering in the other live Clearwire cities - Las Vegas, Portland and Atlanta - during August, and its next targets will be Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle, as Clearwire deploys in these areas by year end.

The highlight of the Las Vegas launch was the availability of the Samsung Mondi, one of the most avant-garde devices for WiMAX and a welcome addition since Nokia withdrew its only WiMAX offering, the N810. The Mondi is an MID with Qwerty keyboard, Wi-Fi/WiMAX, 3-megapixel camera, GPS and a 4.3-inch touchscreen. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and the Opera 9.5 browser with push email and MMS support but no voice component. Unsubsidized, it will cost $449, or $349 with a two-year service contract.

Another addition to the growing range of Clearwire tariff options is the Clear 4G+, a dual-mode EV-DO/WiMAX dongle that supports roaming outside the carrier's metro areas. This is also the basis of Sprint 4G and Comcast's dual-mode plan (Comcast is also a Sprint CDMA MVNO, as are the other cablecos in the venture, Cox and Time Warner Cable). Clearwire has promised to bring Mobile WiMAX service to 80 markets covering up to 120m people by the end of 2010.

On the HSPA side, Telecom Italia has selected Milan to launch the world's first commercial network to support the latest iteration of the standard, 28Mbps HSPA+. Several cellcos are deploying 21Mbps HSPA+, which is a software upgrade, but the next speed hike relies on MIMO and so involves the addition of hardware (antennas). Further performance boosts will come in future from the use of multiple carriers. TIM will extend the system, supplied by Ericsson, to capital Rome in October and then gradually expand nationwide.

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