Clearwire Getting Ready to Launch in Chicago?
UPDATE, 1/5/09: According to a Clearwire spokesperson, the ad was part of a national “run of network” buy and not specifically directed at the Tribune or Chicago, where the company hasn’t yet announced launch plans. Oh well! No official announcement from the company yet, but from an advertising perspective it looks like Clearwire is getting ready to launch its service in Chicago, one of the markets Sprint had hoped to launch with its Xohm service in 2008. Checking out the Chicago Tribune home page today, you can “clearly” see the Clearwire ads running front and center:
We tried typing in some Chicago addresses into the Clear service-finder page, but didn’t get a positive result for service being available in Chicago. Still, if the ads are starting to run, can the service launch be far behind?
Not that a quick debut of Chicago would be a surprise — after all, the network has been ready to go for several months now, with Motorola folks telling us at WiMax World in October that the towers and back-end were all but finished. Take a ride along with us and see what kind of speeds Clearwire might be able to deliver in the Windy City:
January 5th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I think Chicagoans like myself will take to the service quite well. I was able to demo Sprint’s Xohm at Wimax world here in Chicago, and it worked rather well. Although we have a lot of landline/cable options already, some decent competition can never hurt.
Also wanted to give a quick shout out to the former Terabeam gang who migrated to Sprint and Clearwire: glad to see you guys in the news again!