The 4G battle intensifies
Clearwire, the WiMAX company majority owned by Sprint Nextel, but with investment from Intel and Google, among others, has announced it's bringing its CLEAR 4G WiMAX service to ten more locations in the US.
As implied by the term 4G, WiMAX hopes to be the next generation wireless technology of choice. Its stated USP is that it offers wireless broadband at similar speeds to what we currently get through wired connections.
Clearwire plans to bring CLEAR to 80 markets and 120 million people by the end of 2010 and some larger cities, like Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle by the end of this year. It wants to get a move on, however, because there's also a fair bit of momentum behind competing 4G technology - LTE (Long Term Evolution).
With the full utilisation of 3G bandwidth only just beginning as mobile broadband spreads and the next generation of smartphones arrives, it will be a while before 4G occupies centre stage. However the battle between WiMAX and LTE is already well underway, with the stakes high enough for major technology companies to invest lavishly now in the hope of huge rewards in future.
