New Clearwire CEO stamps his mark with executive reshuffle

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New Clearwire CEO stamps his mark with executive reshuffle

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 15 May, 2009

READ MORE: Clearwire

As well as its landmark Cisco partnership, Clearwire was also announcing its first quarter results and a management reshuffle this week, with new CEO Bill Morrow clearly stamping his mark on the company.

Morrow is determined to demonstrate the strengths for which he was hired - operational excellence and the ability to propel Clearwire from start-up mode to a bigger stage. Although co-founder Ben Wolff remains chairman, other stalwarts of the Clearwire top rank from its launch phase are moving, including Barry West, former CTO of Nextel and head of 4G at Sprint Nextel, and one of the most well recognized evangelists for WiMAX in general and Clearwire in particular.

West, who took the role of president and chief network architect when he moved over from Sprint to the new joint venture, is moving away from day-to-day operations and, while keeping the title 'president', will become a 'global ambassador' for Clearwire, promoting the technology to other operators round the world. This plays to West's strengths - technological understanding and evangelism - just as the CEO role and operational control play to Morrow's. And it fits in with one of the strands in Clearwire's many-stringed bow, its bid to partner with other carriers in order to pool expertise and bid for consulting revenue, collaborations. In particular, it has said it has its eyes on the Indian WiMAX boom.

Clearwire CTO John Saw will take over West's network responsibilities, while another veteran of the original Clearwire, COO Perry Satterlee, is stepping down. No replacement has yet been named, but there is a hint of Morrow wielding a new broom and placing his mark on the all-important aspects of the business - operations and the US market. He also appointed three new executives - Michael Severt, former CEO of Switchbox Labs, to the new post of chief commercial officer; former Level 3 CIO Kevin Hart to the same role at Clearwire; and Laurent Bentitou, most recently T-Mobile USA's VP of human resources, as 'chief people officer'.

Despite all this activity, the results themselves were unexciting. The company reported a loss of $71.06m, or $0.38 per share, from a pro forma loss of $76.44m, or $0.41 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenues rose 21% to $62.1m. (The figures from a year ago represent the numbers from the old Clearwire.)

Clearwire added 25,000 net subscribers during the quarter, compared to 48,000 gains in the same period a year earlier, and now has a total base of 550,000. Morrow blamed this on increased churn in the 'old Clearwire' fixed broadband markets, which use proprietary technology, though he said growth on the Portland WiMAX network is 2.5 times faster than in those older fixed sectors. Overall ARPU was $39.52, an increase of $2.66.

The operator spent $122m in capex in the first quarter, up from $83m in the fourth quarter, but still a fraction of $1.5bn to $1.9bn it expects to spend this year as it expands WiMAX into a further six or seven cities. It maintained its business outlook for 2009 and 2010,

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