Clearwire, Alvarion Finally Hook Up — in Spain
Close watchers of the nascent U.S. WiMAX market couldn’t help but notice that for the past couple years there has been a strange sort of tension between the largest WiMAX-only gear vendor, Alvarion, and the largest WiMAX service provider, Clearwire. (Like at the recent 4GWE show, where an Alvarion keynote speech about the general state of WiMAX never mentioned Clearwire’s name.) Was it because Clearwire’s exclusive supplier deals with Motorola and Samsung kept Alvarion out of the game? Whatever the cause, it looks like the relationship is starting to thaw a bit with Tuesday’s announcement of an Alvarion deal to supply a Clearwire network launch — in Spain.
Since the network there will use spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band — unlike Clearwire’s U.S. markets, which use the 2.5 GHz band — there was probably room for Clearwire to negotiate with someone other than its current suppliers, without making anyone angry. No matter what this particular deal is worth, for the WiMAX industry as a whole it’s a great thing to have two of the biggest names in WiMAX from the U.S. market (Alvarion has its headquarters in Tel Aviv, but its U.S. presence is considerable) finally working together. If you remember that Ben Franklin quote about hanging together or hanging separately, with big-carrier competition on the horizon hanging together is going to be a necessity if the U.S. WiMAX market is going to survive and thrive.
