Clearwire finishes 2009 roll-out, woos new resellers and handsets
Published: 2 December, 2009
READ MORE: US | Clearwire | MVNO | Handset | WiMAX
Continued ...
"We are talking to all of them," Morrow said in the interview. "We are talking to carriers, cable operators, phone companies and satellite. We welcome everyone on ... It's good for Clearwire." During the company's most recent quarterly earnings call, Morrow had already hinted at a longer roster of MVNOs next year, saying the firm was "ramping up our systems to be able to support even more wholesale customers". These new partners would not necessarily have to be stakeholders like the original resellers, and would not all have to come from traditional operators - there are also opportunities for WiMAX network owners in machine-to-machine and embedded services, which could be branded by device makers and retailers (as at UQ in Japan, which numbers several electronics retail chains among its partners); or in smart grid and other public sector applications.
As for the analysts, Pike & Fischer predicts Clearwire will win 600,000 customers by the end of 2010, and will generate revenues of up to $580bn. And UBS has upgraded the carrier to 'neutral' from 'sell', doubling its price target to $6. "We have been concerned about Clearwire's ability to finance its roll-out and the size of the WiMAX opportunity given the expected deployment of LTE-based services by Verizon and AT&T. The capital raised largely eliminates the funding risk while likely getting Clearwire running in additional markets sooner than expected," the broker said. Clearwire secured $1.6bn in funding last month, up from the $1.45bn offering proposed earlier in November. That cash will go toward paying off $1.4bn in debt, netting the company an extra $200m in cash.
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