Clearwire cancels Rover prepaid service

Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) is putting its Rover prepaid service on ice after experimenting with the youth-targeted brand for eight months. Clearwire will continue to support and sell the Rover’s two products, the Puck Wi-Fi router and a WiMAX-only USB dongle, but it’s doing away with the daily, weekly and monthly prepaid plans that accompanied them, folding the service into its primary Clear brand and no-contract monthly data plans.

In a statement Clearwire explained that the WiMAX operator only trialed Rover commercially in a few markets and concluded that maintaining a separate prepaid service offered no particular advantages over its Clear suits of services:

Rover provided us with the ability to test some new pay-as-you-go pricing options and was offered on a limited retail basis in a couple markets. We are continually evaluating options for improving and streamlining our offers and product distribution as we expect double-digit growth from our retail channel this year, and as such, we will be discontinuing the sale of Rover branded products in the coming weeks. We will instead be providing our CLEAR-branded “no-term contract” service plan to customers. We feel confident that that these CLEAR-branded “no-term contract” service plan offerings should meet the needs of most of the Rover customer base.

Unlike other operators’ prepaid-vs.-postpaid offerings, there isn’t a lot distinguishing Clearwire’s two flavors of the service. Rover allowed customers to buy access by the day or week, but there is little difference between the two monthly service plans except a $10 price differential and the timing of the billing cycle—customers paid for data upfront rather than at the end of the billing cycle. Otherwise both plans offered unlimited data access and required no contract (CP: Clearwire tackles prepaid by the day rather than the MB).

Clearwire’s retail efforts have been under pressure as the operator has struggled to raise more capital for the next phases of its nationwide rollout. In some of its newer WiMAX markets Clearwire hasn’t even been selling a retail service in an effort to cut costs, offering network access only through its resale partners. Marketing and selling two brands may have just added more operational expense.