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Comcast WiMAX Femtocells --- Interesting Sidebar to the Clearwire Deal
It seems that part of the recent Clearwire deal with its numerous investors guaranteed its partners access to some spectrum for femtocell deployments
I thought this side story about Comcast's plans to deploy WiMAX-based femtocells on its networks was a very interesting portion of the Clearwire deal. Many people have asked me how likely other carriers of note were to deploy WiMAX over LTE. And generally, they usually mean major wireless carriers. But if WiMAX femto-cells are a part of the Clearwire deal as apparently they are, this opens up deployment potential for Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House (as well as the other vendors if they so choose) all to deploy some form of WiMAX fed by their existing broadband.
The deal apparently guarantees each investor 5 MHz of spectrum in each market to deploy femtocells. This is sufficient according to Comcast to deliver 8 Mbps download speeds. Comcast said they would have liked to have more spectrum.
The investors all also have a deal to buy Clearwire wireless service at wholesale and re-sell it, but if the firms can deploy their own femtocell networks under this portion of the deal, then they don't have to pay that wholesale cost. Such femtocell networks should open up significant application opportunities in the home including HDTV, VoIP and more. But all is not completely rosy; there is still no WiMAX femtocell specification, which will need to be worked out to bring a product to market.
Tim Sanders
The Final Mile
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