CHICAGO — WiMAX providers such as Clearwire and Sprint Nextel are well-positioned to meet users’ broadband demands in the present and the immediate future, but regulators need to consider future spectrum needs and think twice about dividing available spectrum into smaller chunks in the name of promoting competition, said Scott Richardson, chief strategy officer for Clearwire, to a WiMAX World audience here today.
 
Mobile broadband providers will be pushed to meet customer expectations that will increasingly be based on in-home broadband experiences, Richardson said. That means mobile broadband networks also will need to deliver high-definition video, which will require 70 MHz channels, he said. DVD-quality video will require 50 MHz channels, he added, and if that spectrum is not available, services will be constrained.
 
Richardson devoted most of his keynote speech to sharing Clearwire’s vision for personal broadband, emphasizing the need to provide the same kind of service on a mobile basis that consumers get today from fixed broadband services. In the 40 markets in which Clearwire has deployed its pre-WiMAX technology, it is capturing most of its customers from those existing services, with 41% moving from cable, 29% from DSL, and only 24% from dial-up, he said.
 
“Although we are known for our consumer focus, a lot of our customers use the service for both business and home use,” he said. “And 15% are using the service as an addition to their existing broadband, which is a case in point for the value of a personal broadband service.”
 
Clearwire’s mobile WiMAX trial in the area around Portland, Ore., has expanded to 40 sites and is successfully providing consistent service — a fact demonstrated in a somewhat harrowing video in which an Intel engineer managed to drive a car at speeds up to 80 kilometers per hour while monitoring the access speeds of the service and the quality of an ongoing voice-over-IP call on computer monitors, all the while talking to a video camera in the back seat.
 
“We don’t recommend you try this at home,” Richardson deadpanned.