Clearwire's LTE ambitions may not be taken seriously in the U.S., given that the company can't afford it, but it may soon have bigger fish to fry.
Clearwire and China Mobile, the world's largest carrier with more than 700 million subscribers, have announced plans to work together to hasten global deployment of TD-LTE, an upgraded form of the 4G LTE standard we see today on Verizon, and soon, on AT&T.
China Mobile began developing TD-LTE three years ago on the cheaper and less trafficked 2.5 GHz band, and its chairman clearly aspires to make this the new global standard of high-speed wireless broadband.
Apple is reportedly looking into it; vendors like Sweden's Ericsson and Taiwan's Far EasTone began running tests this year. Chinese manufacturer ZTE announced two commercial TD-LTE base stations at the Shanghai World Expo last year.
Clearwire spokeswoman Susan Johnston added that the TD flavor of LTE was "scalable and future proofed," referring to its ability to support multiple carriers and channels in the same box within a cell tower.
"We estimate that we can support up to 10 times more devices on a cell site than another 4G carrier with only 20 MHz of spectrum in a large Top 100 market," she said.
More importantly for Clearwire, which licenses the 2.5–2.6 GHz spectrum bands, the positioning of China Mobile's 2.5 GHz spectrum makes it an easy upgrade for WiMax operators—like Sprint, whose 4G WiMax is powered by Clearwire (by the way, Sprint is unveiling its 4G strategy on Oct. 7).
Last month Clearwire announced its desire to build an LTE network "subject to additional funding," which has been estimated at $600 million.
Meanwhile, China Mobile was reportedly in talks with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself to jointly develop an iPhone, which is not completely unbelievable given that China is Apple's fastest growing market.