Clearwire to add LTE to its network

The carrier plans to add gear that is ready for 100-megabit LTE Advanced, pending more funding

WiMax mobile operator Clearwire plans to add equipment to its network that can use LTE-Advanced, the next generation of LTE technology, the company announced Wednesday.

Clearwire said it plans to leverage its significant holdings of radio spectrum to achieve speeds of at least 100M bps (bits per second) with the technology. The company will focus the deployment on dense urban areas of its current WiMax markets where demand for mobile data is high. Clearwire has already achieved downstream speeds of more than 120M bps in trials.

However, the company said its LTE plans depend on it raising additional funding.

Clearwire announced the plans along with its second-quarter financial results, which showed an operating loss of US$940 million. The company posted a net subscriber gain of 1.5 million to 7.65 million total subscribers.

(More to come.)

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com

Copyright © 2011 IDG Communications, Inc.

It’s time to break the ChatGPT habit
Shop Tech Products at Amazon