Summary
1. It was not that long ago that the current President and Chief Architect of Clearwire, Barry West, was perhaps the most ardent proponent regarding the supposed uniqueness of WiMAX. 2. Now the previous talk about “no other horse in sight” has fallen by the wayside. 3. It appears that West’s excessive rhetoric was reigned in to a large extent after Dan Hesse took over as CEO of Sprint.
Analysis
West is at present, “welcoming [Verizon and AT&T] into the competitive arena. That a “rising tide lifts all boats.” They are “validating what we said all along.” While West is looking forward to “the next phase of a really exciting story,” there is no mention of markets beyond Baltimore and Portland in the interview – other than “a rollout phase.”
There is a noticeable hesitation not to go overboard on the hype these days. The new Clearwire CEO is undoubtedly reinforcing this tendency at the company. There are a few subtle lapses such as in talking about “hundreds of millions of laptop users.” Of course, with a more conservative and localized strategy likely, Clearwire will be able to get only a very small fraction of this business.
West also says that he was correct about the inevitability of non-traditional devices as AT&T and Verizon are looking to do likewise on LTE. Well, that was one of the few matters that he had right.
