Enter sandbox
Summer may be over, but communications giant Clearwire still thinks it's on the beach - declaring it has built itself a 20 square mile ‘sandbox' for developers to get dug in to 4G WiMAX in Silicon Valley.
Stretching from Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, to Google HQ in Mountain View and even parts of Palo Alto, the new network, first announced back in April, is the largest 4G test area to date, with Comcast hoping to allow thousands of developers to test the mobile broadband network and develop new applications for WIMAX.
The test area will cover Clearwire's partners, Intel and Google, who collectively sunk $3.2 billion into Clearwire's initative, along with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.
Cisco has also contributed to the multibillion dollar project by supplying the infrastructure for Clear 4G Wimax across the US and will receive coverage from Clearwire's test network within a couple of months.
Developers at both Intel and Google have been playing with their own internal 4G networks for some time now, but the new larger network will open up the playing field to a wider audience of developers, who can sign up to Clearwire's development programme by outlining their ideas for future WIMAX apps and buying a Clearwire WIMAX USB modem for $50.
Clearwire also said in a recent press release it would allow certain "qualified developers" into its sandbox for free, but when HEXUS asked a Clearwire rep who qualified as qualified, she could not immediately answer.