Clearwire network No. 3 goes live in Atlanta

Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) officially launched its Clear WiMax mobile broadband service in Atlanta today after offering the service below the radar for the last month. The launch is the first of at least 8 market launches planned this year that will put Clearwire closer to its goal of covering 120 million points of presence with 4G by the end of 2010.

Motorola (NYSE:MOT) today revealed that its 400-cell-site network is up and running in Atlanta, the largest metro market launched by Clearwire so far. Clearwire has also quietly started offering the Clear service in Las Vegas over another Motorola-built network, preparing for its official launch this summer. Atlanta and Las Vegas were two of the four markets Clearwire had targeted for launch this year before it merged with Sprint’s WiMax division. Of the other two, Portland, Ore., went live at the beginning of the year and Grand Rapids, Mi., disappeared from Clearwire’s launch list after a legal dust-up between Sprint and its affiliate iPCS over the combined Clearwire offering WiMax service in its Midwest territories. Grand Rapids may still make an appearance, though. Clearwire officials have said its 8-market list isn’t final and that other markets could be added.

After launching Clearwire’s originally planned markets, it plans to turn to the networks Sprint (NYSE:S) built for its former Xohm 4G division. Samsung has already built out networks in Philadelphia and is currently deploying in Dallas-Fort Worth, both of which are scheduled to go live this year. Samsung has also fully built out a network in Washington, DC, but that network’s launch has been delayed until 2010 because of difficulties procuring high-capacity backhaul links.

Also in Sprint’s former 4G footprint is Chicago, Clearwire’s largest planned market launch this year. Motorola has already built 770 cell sites in Chicago covering a large portion of the 10 million people in the metropolitan region. In addition to turning on its existing infrastructure, Clearwire is in the process of upgrading several of its larger fixed broadband wireless networks to support mobile WiMax. Clearwire has announced plans to launch 4G in Honolulu, Charlotte and Seattle by the end of the year.

Though Clearwire is far from achieving the coverage of 3G operators, it has begun to maneuver its marketing against them. In its announcement today, it took a swipe at Verizon and Sprint’s EV-DO 3G services as well as AT&T’s forthcoming high-speed packet access (HSPA) upgrades, which will double the current capacity of AT&T’s 3G network. “Some of today’s 3G wireless networks typically deliver download speeds of between 1.0 and 1.7 Mb/s,” Clearwire said. “Clear customers, however, can expect to see download speeds of 4 to 6 Mb/s, with bursts exceeding 15 Mb/s, far surpassing even the peak theoretical speeds of 7.2 Mb/s in upcoming 3G upgrades.”