Abandoning the WiMAX versus LTE rhetoric that have characterized this latest round of technology wars, Clearwire co-chairman Ben Wolff lauded 4G industry as a whole in his keynote at CTIA Wireless today, saying that both LTE and WiMAX would be the technologies that bridge the gap between wireline broadband data consumption and wireless consumption. While placing the two standards on equal technical footing , Wolff was also quick to point out Clearwire’s superior spectrum holdings compared to other operators, giving it implicit an advantage in any large-scale mobile broadband rollout.
“The DNA of both technologies is about 80% the same,” Wolff said referring to the underlying radio technology they share. “I don’t see a lot of differentiation in how the 4G technologies compete with one another.” But how those either technologies are deployed will be a crucial differentiator, Wolff said , with the spoils going to those with the most spectrum.
Since it merged with Sprint’s WiMAX division, Clearwire holdings exceed 100 MHz in most metro markets and in some it holds as much as 120 MHz, compared to the 22 MHz nationwide license Verizon Wireless won in last year’s 700 MHz auction and the 12 MHz of 700 MHz AT&T holds in most markets (Both AT&T and Verizon also hold AWS spectrum they could use for LTE). Wolff said Clearwire could build a network that offers a theoretical capacity of 540 MB/s of capacity per cell with 120 MHz of spectrum—far outstripping the 45 Mb/s that could be offered over a single 10 MHz channel.
That overall capacity advantage will become crucial as mobile broadband penetrates further into the consumer psyche and expectations grow that the mobile data network can be used just like the wireline one, Wolff said. The typical mobile phone today consumes about 30 MB of data a month and a smartphone about 30 times more. That’s nearing 1 GB, about as much as a light broadband user on the PC. If a gigabyte of data month is all the mobile industry was expected to deliver, there wouldn’t be a problem, Wolff said, but mobile broadband is chasing a moving target as more bandwidth intensive applications gain popularity on the wireline Internet. If you add to the mix mobile video services from Hulu and the occasional streamed DVD-quality movie from Netflix, data consumption jumps to 15 GB or more or month. Since 4G promises to deliver the wireline broadband experience on mobile, that 15 GB a month per subscriber will become the target mobile operators are expected to hit, Wolff said. The only way to hit that target will be with gobs of capacity delivered over a 4G network.
“All networks, either wireline or wireless, have a limited amount of capacity to meter out,” Wolff said. In a world of huge capacity demands, operators can’t just manage bandwidth, they have to scale exponentially, he said. “Clearly more spectrum equals more capacity.”
Clearwire appears to be backing up its words. While its big device news at CTIA was the unveiling of Samsung’s Mondi WiMAX tablet, Clearwire also announced the official launch of a Wi-Fi router it has been experimenting with for months called the Clear Spot. When hooked into one of Clearwire’s USB WiMAX modems, the device distributes the wireless broadband connection to any number of WiFi embedded device. Instead of limiting the amount of devices that can access a single Clear subscription, Clearwire is actively trying to grow them, practically asking its customers to fill its WiMAX pipes.
Today Clearwire also announced today the planned launch of a 20 square-mile WiMAX network in Silicon Valley that would serve as innovation test bed for mobile broadband applications. The network would cover the Intel, Google and Cisco Systems’ campuses, as well as many spaces in between.

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