Written by ppachuta on Mar 26, 2009 at 6:50 pm
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It is getting harder to say whether there will be a big market for WiMAX transmission towers. ClearWire’s business model’s performance may not match the communications performance of its WiMAX technology, according to Fortune 500 magazine’s piece on CNN Money.
The technology that promises to deliver Internet at speeds a magnitude higher than broadband wireless works pretty well in the Portland, Ore., deployment; in the reporter’s estimation.
However, to deliver a full-fledged WiMAX network to Portland’s 550,000+ population, 300 transmission towers needed to be deployed at about $150,000 a piece for a grand total of $45 million. Ka-ching! And Portland stands as only the 30th largest city in America.
Fortune figures that infrastructure costs could reach $30 per person, or $4.5 billion, to cover just half the nation's population with a WiMAX network.
Clearwire, which last year merged with Sprint's WiMAX assets, brought in $3.2 billion in investment capital, which will bring it up short. It doesn’t help that the market has pounded the value of its stock, and bank loans right now, and for the foreseeable future, may be hard to come by.