Bill Morrow has been Clearwire’s CEO for only two months, but he’s not at all disillusioned about WiMax’s image in the industry today.
In the company’s first-quarter conference call today and in an interview with mocoNews, he addressed questions head-on about why Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR) believes WiMax will be successful — despite a lot of negative press and attention. Morrow said consumers fundamentally don’t care what technology they are using as long as it works. To make his point, Morrow used the iPhone as an example. He asked, why are Skype and SlingBox being blocked? Because “there’s not enough capacity, and the bandwidth is too narrow…In short, the demand is there, but 3G can only offer a subset of what what fixed broadband connections can offer.”
To be sure, the facts are a bit puzzling. On one hand, consumers’ appetites for applications are growing. On the other, critics wonder if WiMax is the right choice and whether Clearwire’s wireless high-speed broadband services are needed and relevant. Morrow: “I worry about whether people can process the information based on a lot of the articles I see and the comments being made.”
— On the WiMax vs. LTE debate: With many carriers, such as Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), deciding to use LTE and not WiMax, it may look like there is something inherently wrong with WiMax. Morrow: “It
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