Aug 11, 2009 10:58 AM,

Clearwire adds Huawei to WiMax vendor mix

By Sarah Reedy

Along with Motorola and Samsung, Huawei will provide the radio access network for Clearwire’s WiMax rollout

More on this Topic

Industry News

Blogs

Briefing Room

“The general strategy for us with three base station vendors that we have is to award markets based on performance, as well as cost and ability to scale to meet our needs,” said Dr. John Saw, senior vice president and Chief Technology Officer for Clearwire, on a media conference call. “Having said that, we do have Huawei started in Seattle and Hawaii islands, including Honolulu and Maui.”

Regarding the timing, Saw said that Clearwire is bringing in a third vendor now to add capacity and enable the company to scale rapidly to meet its ambitious launch plans. Huawei brings a significant improvement in coverage and capacity and will ultimately lower the cost of deployment, he said. The deal could reduce base stations costs by 20 to 30%. Clearwire is on track with its goal of reaching 80 markets and 120 million pops covered by the end of 2010, Saw said.

The partnership is significant for both Clearwire as it picks up momentum and for Huawei, strong in China but looking to gain traction in the US. Huawei already provides equipment to both Cox communications and Leap Wireless, but Clearwire is the first national operator to choose Huawei for a US build-out.

Huawei also had a strong second-quarter and is encroaching on Alcatel-Lucent as the leader of the global optical networking (ON) market. Overall, this sector brought in $3.9 billion in the second quarter, up 11% sequentially, but down 9% compared to last year, according to Ovum. Huawei and fellow ON vendor ZTE have benefited from an uptick in spending in China. Ovum’s Q2 global optical equipment networking vendors ranking found that driven by 3G network builds in China, Huawei is within 0.2 points of Alcatel-Lucent’s 20.7% market share. Of the top 10 vendors, only Huawei and ZTE posted both sequential and year-over-year revenue gains.

In addition to its vendors, Clearwire's investors include 51% owner Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Google and Intel. Clearwire will announce its second-quarter earnings this afternoon.