Clearwire, the Mobile WiMAX carrier serving some 130 million pops in the United States, announced right now it will streamline its Clear-branded service, offering ONLY unlimited prepaid Net service at $ 50 per month.
The move removes postpaid (contract) plans. It also removes device leasing, activation fees, early termination fees and restocking fees.
Clearwire previously supplied postpaid service at $ 45 per month with a service contract. Now it delivers a flat $ 50/month unlimited service program.
Clearwire will also discontinue sales of dual-mode WiMAX/CDMA devices. Clearwire previously provided devices that could roam onto Sprint Nextel’s 3G CDMA EV-DO network, but now it will only offer you access to its own WiMAX network.
This August, Clearwire announced its intent to add “LTE Advanced-prepared” technology to its 4G network. But the LTE-Advanced service will reportedly use the very same 30 MHz spectrum budget of the current WiMAX network.
Reportedly, rather of utilizing three distinct ten MHz frequency bands in every of 3 tower sectors, Clearwire’s new upgrade will reapportion the very same spectrum. They will devote only 10 MHz to WiMAX with the remaining 20 MHz dedicated to TD-LTE. Each and every sector will reuse the very same frequency (10 MHz for WiMAX, 20 MHz for LTE).
Frequency reuse on each sector is also utilised by CDMA networks. Nevertheless networks like WiMAX and LTE use a various approach, dividing up the Time Division packets to decrease interference with Synchronous OFDMA.
Why would Clearwire eradicate very prized contract subscribers? Perhaps Clearwire doesn’t want to anger subscribers who may soon discover their WiMAX service has deteriorated with the advent of Advanced LTE sharing the tower and spectrum.
Clearwire might provide WiMAX subs a good package deal, enticing them into switching from WiMAX to LTE. Roaming LTE service could be enhanced by Sprint’s FD-LTE service on 1.9 GHz. But it won’t take place subsequent week. Chips, handsets, client gear and towers won’t be usually obtainable until subsequent summer at the earliest.
