3/13/2009 by www.mountainviewcellphones.com
Clearwire announced their anticipated rollout of the WiMax network in the coming years. I did some numbers to quantify the estimated population that will be covered by its roll out (beyond Portland and Baltimore). Given the coverage maps from the website, the network areas extend beyond the city proper so I took the metropolitan area population estimates (data from Wikipedia).
Existing Markets: 10.1MM
Portland 2,000,000
Baltimore 2,600,000
Seattle 3,263,497
Honolulu 371,657
Charlotte 1,897,034
This year growth: 26.6MM
Atlanta 5,278,000
Chicago 9,500,000
Philadelphia 5,800,000
Las Vegas 1,986,146
Dallas/Ft. Worth 6,100,000
Next year growth: 35.8MM
New York 18,815,988
Boston 4,400,000
San Francisco 7,000,000
Washington DC 5,300,000
Houston 5,600,000
Now, I could be underestimating some areas, but we have about 72.6MM from Wikipedia numbers for the surrounding metropolitan areas of these cities by 2010 announced. They have many other smaller cities already lit up from the previous Clearwire, so we can add about another 10.0MM to be generous and about another 5.0MM in yet to be announced locations, and we get about 87.6MM people covered. This is still behind the 120MM announced by 2010, so I think there must be more cities to be announced at the end of 2009 when they have some data about their progress to see test the rate of expansion.
What’s also important to notice about their plans is that they are targeting the large regional areas for service. For domestic business, people travel to and from these major regions so they will have cover at the destination.
Though the numbers currently don’t add up to their press release, I think the roll-out is still to early to predict. The roll-out could be much faster if the adoption rate of the Wi-Max service was much faster than anticipated. Given the great rates and mobility offered by this solution, it has the chance to be the sole Internet provider to many customers and to take away business from DSL service in hoards. This is especially true for small businesses that are held captive to DSL service where cable doesn’t reach (we happen to be such an operation currently but we are not alone, we have a phone number we don’t use just for DSL service).
Provided we are in a recession/depression, a conservative roll-out plan is the wise business strategy and to match cash burn with cash flow as much as possible is reassuring.
Lastly, their balanced roll-out will be necessary to keep device manufacturers interested in providing WiMax devices. Broadband data cards are a great first start and should be able to carry the business for 1 year, but beyond this, we should be expecting devices that leverage the new bandwidth in innovative ways…that SKYPE/Google Voice mobile phone?