Category: financial

May 12, 2006

Clearwire Files for $400m IPO

By Glenn Fleishman

Clearwire gives up its numbers in exchange for market dollars: The latest Craig McCaw-led company likely to become a billion-dollar operation is Clearwire, a provide of broadband wireless using equipment from its acquired subsidiary NextNet Wireless. The company has received over $1b in financing over several years, resulting in deployment in 27 markets in the US, plus Belgium and Ireland. Their IPO filing shows 88,000 US subscribers and 11,500 in Belgium and Ireland. It lost $140m on revenues of $33.5m last year, but might need to spend billions to provide national service.

Clearwire owns the second largest position in the 2.5 GHz BRS band; Sprint Nextel was number one, and remember who turned Nextel into a powerhouse, partly because of clever spectrum acquisition and usage? Om Malik notes that Sprint Nextel and Clearwire have been swapping licenses to produce better national coverage for each. The Seattle Times notes that the IPO filing says Clearwire could “pass” 90m users based on its spectrum holdings.

Read their Form S-1 for all the details.

Posted by Glennf at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2006

Qualcomm Licenses Patent It Says Covers WiMax

By Glenn Fleishman

Qualcomm has signed with Soma the first licensing deal for its portfolio of what it claims are patents covering WiMax technology: My good friend and colleague Nancy Gohring writes for IDG News Service that Qualcomm acquired these patents as part of its purchase of Flarion Technologies. Flarion has pursued broadband wireless via a standard developing in 802.20 (mobile broadband wireless access), while WiMax emerged out of the 802.16 working group (broadband wireless access). Mobility was inserted into WiMax via 802.16e (now 802.16-2005), which covers fixed, nomadic/portable, and mobile broadband.

Qualcomm wouldn’t comment for the story, but analysts expect this unnecessary public announcement was a shot across the bow to signal their intent. Alvarion says in this report that they and other industry leaders believe Qualcomm’s patents aren’t relevant to WiMax.

Posted by Glennf at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2005

Intel Makes Global WiMax Investment

By Glenn Fleishman

ZDNet reports that Intel released a slew of money around the world for WiMax development: This includes a $1.12 billion contract for a project in Taiwan, which will agree to provide the necessary spectrum for the work. The project will be government-assisted until 2008 to bring businesses into the fold.

The article says Intel has 13 more Europe and Americas networks up and running, with 10 more they’ve sponsored due to appear by year’s end. This includes projects in The Dominican Republic and Austria.

Posted by Glennf at 12:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2005

100Ms Broadband Wireless Users, Not Billions, Say Qualcomm Co-Founder

By Glenn Fleishman

Andrew Viterbi suggested that broadband wireless has a smaller potential market than estimated: He co-founded Qualcomm, and doesn’t believe the applications merit bandwidth beyond what’s currently be rolled out. The prices would make it prohibitive. It’s unclear from the reportage whether he was speaking generally or just about mobile broadband, although the latter seems likely.

Posted by Glennf at 01:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Shipment Bragging Rights to Alvarion?

By Glenn Fleishman

Alvarion issued a press release about their 10,000 BreezeMax Pro subscriber unit orders: They’ve shipped 5,000 of these already to 30 customers. These early units employ Intel’s 802.16-2004 chipset which can’t yet be called WiMax certified. Numbers from anyone else?

Posted by Glennf at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 09, 2005

WiMax Sales $72M in 2005, $2B in 2009

By Glenn Fleishman

Forward Concepts report indicates massive growth: With WiMax viewed in their report as complementary to Wi-Fi and cellular, not a full replacement for either, carriers and other will use WiMax as a major component in deployment. One comment I’ve heard often is that cellular carriers in the U.S. are likely to follow their European counterparts and use more wireless backhaul among cellular towers instead of wired.

Posted by Glennf at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 25, 2005

Clearwire Attracts Cash

By Nancy Gohring

The Seattle Times reports that Clearwire has raised $260 million in a debt offering: That figure could double based on an investors’ option. That’s a decent chunk of change to be used for growing its coverage area.

Posted by nancyg at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack