Clearwire NTK Excerpt: Cisco Deal a Silicon Valley WiMax Wake-Up Call
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from our just-released Clearwire NTK, or “Clearwire Need To Know” report for June 2009, a $4.95 research report that delivers the most up-to-date information available about the nation’s nascent national WiMax provider. In this excerpt we take a closer look at the recent Clearwire-Cisco partnership, and what it may mean for the visibility of WiMax in Silicon Valley and beyond.
Business Update: Cisco Deal, Silicon Valley Testbed are Big Steps Forward in the Partnership Game
After Cisco bought WiMax radio supplier Navini in October 2007, industry watchers have waited and wondered why the biggest networking vendor wasn’t doing more with WiMax in the U.S. market. Now after the mid-May announcement of a multi-year deal between Cisco and Clearwire, the waiting is over — and you have to think Cisco just delivered a wake-up call about WiMax to Silicon Valley and Wall Street in one big move.
What really made the deal big news was the inclusion of Cisco’s pledge to ship a mobile WiMax end-user device before year’s end. The other part of the deal, which involves Clearwire using Cisco gear in its core IP network, isn’t so surprising — in any IP network of Clearwire’s size, you might be more surprised not to find Cisco gear in the wiring closets.
But by pledging to develop end-user devices, Cisco is signaling to the rest of the industry (and investors, if they are listening) that WiMax is more than a technical curiousity. Cisco CEO John Chambers is famous for not wanting to get into new businesses until they offer Cisco significantly large opportunities, usually in the billion-dollar-per-year revenue range. Is WiMax the next billion-dollar business for Cisco? Thanks to the Clearwire deal, that question is now more than hypothetical.
The Cisco deal is an important second step into Silicon Valley, following Clearwire’s early-April announcement of plans to build a test-bed WiMax network spanning between the Cisco, Intel and Google campuses in the southern part of the San Francisco peninsula. (We are also hearing from our Silicon Valley sources that you can also expect this “test” WiMax network to work its way over to Palo Alto to cover the Stanford campus.)
With Cisco committed to building devices, and a free WiMax network expected to be operational before the end of 2009, Clearwire is setting the table for much greater access to the big thinkers and independent innovators who populate what is still the most creative crucible for American technology business ideas. As Googleheads, Cisco types and Stanford students kick the tires on an operational WiMax network, Clearwire becomes less of a far-off experiment and something with tangible potential. Throw in Clearwire’s plans to build an operational network around the Bay area by 2010, and you have a lot more chances for the nascent service provider to prove itself in front of the very audience they need — builders of creative devices and applications.
Want to know more about Clearwire device plans for 2009, as well as market launches and subscriber counts for the company? Order our Clearwire NTK June 2009 report for just $4.95 and get everything you NEED TO KNOW about the nation’s nascent WiMax provider.
