Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) inked a wholesale mobile WiMAX deal with AT&T Mobility (NYSE:T) MVNO Jolt Mobile.
The deal, which will eventually include Clearwire's TD-LTE service when Clearwire launches that network next year, will enable Jolt Mobile customers to add mobile WiMAX broadband to their plans. Jolt, a subsidiary of Net Inc., offers prepaid service using AT&T's network.
Currently, Jolt's plans range from $40 per month for unlimited voice and texting to $60 per month for unlimited voice, texting and 2 GB of data. A Jolt representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the MVNO will price Clearwire's services.
For Clearwire, the Jolt deal is the latest in a string of arrangements meant to expand its customer base. MVNO H2O Wireless, which also works with AT&T, has been reselling Clearwire's WiMAX service since February. In March Cricket provider Leap Wireless (NASDAQ:LEAP) inked a wholesale deal to use Clearwire's LTE network, which it plans to launch by June 2013. Clearwire is also providing service for Voyager Mobile, a startup MVNO. And FreedomPop is also taking advantage of Clearwire's network for its planned "freemium" mobile data service.
However, Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S), Clearwire's majority owner, remains by far and away Clearwire's largest wholesale customer.
Now that Wimax is going to be superseded by LTE in the postpaid arena, it makes sense for Clear and Sprint to pimp out their infrastructure as much as possible and roll over that money to the LTE side. With Sprint's prepaid divisions Boost and Virgin Mobile both going wimax on their high end smartphones and more and more even non Sprint mvnos like H20 signing up to get a competitive prepaid broadband product out there, you will see more news like this in the coming months. Too bad Sprint never laid out the network to cover the whole nation on wimax or it'd have been able to operate as an independent wireless entity for phones as well as broadband more successfully.
Now that Wimax is going to be superseded by LTE in the postpaid arena, it makes sense for Clear and Sprint to pimp out their infrastructure as much as possible and roll over that money to the LTE side. With Sprint's prepaid divisions Boost and Virgin Mobile both going wimax on their high end smartphones and more and more even non Sprint mvnos like H20 signing up to get a competitive prepaid broadband product out there, you will see more news like this in the coming months. Too bad Sprint never laid out the network to cover the whole nation on wimax or it'd have been able to operate as an independent wireless entity for phones as well as broadband more successfully.
2.5GHz nationwide in the sense of a "cellular" network would be extremely difficult with present day technology. However, as all the big wireless players off-load onto metropolitan WiFi networks and DAS, Sprint will have Clearwire's LTE-Advanced network if they choose. It could be telling that recently Sprint has decided to move away from DAS and utilize Picocells instead.
Heavy data traffic areas are in populated city metro settings of course, this is where Clearwire could be of help to wireless operators.
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Originally Posted by fonezfonz
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