CTIA Wireless 2010 Scorecard: Operators

Whose profile is rising? Clearwire and MetroPCS

This unlikely pair of operators made some interesting moves and stirred up some lively debate last week at the CTIA Wireless show, making them winners in the operator category.  

Clearwire kicked off the show with more details on markets where it plans to deploy its mobile WiMAX service in 2010. The WiMAX player also debuted a new WiMAX-enabled netbook, the Dell Inspiron Mini 10, which will join Clear's product lineup April 1 and retail for $249.99.

But the real eye-opener at the show was Clearwire's usage statistics. Clearwire Chief Commercial Officer Mike Sievert told the audience attending FierceWireless' co-located "Path to 4G" conference that Clearwire customers are averaging more than 7 GB of data per month--and that doesn't include the traffic from customers of Clearwire's MVNO partners, Comcast, Sprint Nextel and Time Warner Cable. Sievert said consumer uptake of mobile broadband is imminent, and likely will overwhelm the spectrum holdings of traditional wireless operators.

"We're going to be looking at a massive capacity opportunity in this country," said Sievert, claiming that Clearwire's "network of networks" strategy can help the industry satisfy burgeoning mobile-broadband requirements. "We want to be the company that other companies turn to in order to serve this massive demand that we all see unfolding."

Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow also stirred up some controversy when he took the keynote stage with CTIA CEO Steve Largent. Morrow said he wasn't interested in waging a standards war with LTE, and advocated that LTE and WiMAX come together to form one all-IP standard for the future, to enable worldwide roaming and drive economies of scale. 

Though Clearwire has previously acknowledged it could move to LTE sometime in the future, it hasn't until now voiced a strong desire for one global standard for 4G. Interestingly, LTE proponent Verizon Wireless dismissed Morrow's idea for an all-IP standard.

But Clearwire wasn't the only operator sparking buzz. Flat-rate carrier MetroPCS announced at the show it will launch LTE services in Las Vegas and other, unnamed markets in the second half of this year, and will provide those services to consumers via Samsung's SCH-r900, the handset vendor's first CDMA/LTE handset. That announcement was notable because LTE carrier Verizon Wireless has made much ado about its LTE deployment plans, but the carrier has not yet revealed any specifics about LTE devices other than to say that it will likely release its first LTE handset in mid-2011.

Whose profile is falling? Verizon Wireless

At the biggest U.S. wireless show of 2010, the nation's largest operator Verizon Wireless was surprisingly low-key.

Verizon Wireless didn't participate in any of the major keynotes (representatives from the other Tier 1 U.S. carriers--AT&T, Sprint and Deutsche Telecom, parent company of T-Mobile USA--all took turns onstage). Instead Verizon decided to tout its LTE message at some co-located events, such as FierceWireless' "Path to 4G" conference, and at a couple of media events. In addition, it held a press conference to debut its Skype VoIP app that it announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, last month.

Nevertheless, most of Verizon's revelations at the show were predictable. At the FierceWireless "Path to 4G" conference, CTO Tony Melone told a standing-room-only audience that the company would begin friendly user trials of its LTE network this summer, in advance of rolling out commercial services at some point later this year. In addition, Melone reiterated the operator's plans to deploy LTE services to 25 to 30 markets in 2010, covering one-third of the U.S. with LTE.

"We plan to double that in roughly 15 months," Melone said. "The first half of 2012, we'll see two-thirds of the country covered. As we look ahead to the end of 2013, some 200 million POPs will be covered. The map you see today for 3G will be our 4G map, and may be broader than that because there are some areas where we don't have 3G spectrum" where we'll do 4G.

Later in the week, during company's press event, Melone reiterated that the carrier plans to meet the FCC's open-access requirements with its forthcoming LTE network, which will be built in the carrier's 700 MHz C-Block spectrum holdings. Further, Melone said the FCC's open-access provisions appear to track with the agency's proposed net neutrality regulations.

"We believe the open-access requirements will align with whatever happens on net neutrality," Melone said.

Verizon did announce some additional LTE vendors--for things like backhaul capacity and testing--but those types of announcements, while interesting, aren't the headline-grabbers many have come to expect from Verizon at major trade shows.