Clearwire plans to roll-out LTE next year. Operator intends to have its first wave of TD-LTE 5,000 cell sites up and running by June 2013, FierceWireless reported earlier. With TDD-LTE rollout, Clearwire expects to capitalize on its deep spectrum resources to deliver on 4G capacity needs over the long-term.
Clearwire plans to roll-out LTE next year. Operator intends to have its first wave of TD-LTE 5,000 cell sites up and running by June 2013, FierceWireless reported earlier. With TDD-LTE rollout, Clearwire expects to capitalize on its deep spectrum resources to deliver on 4G capacity needs over the long-term.
Last year Clearwire signed an agreement with Sprint, according to that Sprint will pay Clearwire up to $350 million in a series of prepayments over a period of up to two years for LTE capacity if Clearwire achieves certain build-out targets and network specifications by June 2013. The agreements also establish long-term usage-based pricing for LTE services for 2012 and beyond. The companies have agreed to collaborate on a network build plan and will jointly select LTE macro-cell sites to cover Sprint’s high usage area hotspots.
The Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch also said that “not too terribly long” after the first 5,000 sites are online, Clearwire will expand that coverage to 8,000 sites, FierceWireless mentions.
Yesterday Clearwire announced its financial and operating results for fourth quarter and full year 2011. Total revenue for full year 2011 increased 134% year over year to $1.25 billion, primarily driven by wholesale revenue which increased 876% to $493.7 million in 2011 from $50.6 million in 2010. Clearwire ended fourth quarter 2011 with approximately 10.4 million total subscribers, up 140% from 4.3 million subscribers in fourth quarter 2010. The subscriber base consists of 1.3 million retail subscribers and 9.1 million wholesale subscribers.
Clearwire also reported total non-cash write-downs of $129.4 million in fourth quarter 2011 that includes $123.0 million of loss from abandonment of network and other assets primarily related to write-downs of uncompleted WiMAX network development projects that were abandoned in the quarter as a result of our plans to build and launch service on an LTE network.