Sprint and Verizon show 4G devices, while Clearwire opens in Spain

The US claims two of the biggest 4G flagwavers in the world, Clearwire for WiMAX and Verizon Wireless for LTE, and both were showing off their wares at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, while Clearwire was also announcing a live network in Spain.

The operator, which is backed by Sprint, Intel, Google and three cablecos, was providing WiMAX coverage, and device rentals, at the show, having recently gone live in Las Vegas. And various WiMAX devices made their debut, including Sprint’s Overdrive portable hotspot, which connects up to five Wi-Fi gadgets via a shared mobile broadband connection.

In terms of real experience, WiMAX certainly upstaged LTE, especially as the major cellcos were scarcely visible at CES, apart from Verizon issuing an update on LTE progress. This is despite the fact that both WiMAX and LTE will rely heavily on non-phone devices for their success and to differentiate their services, as wireless becomes embedded in a wide range of CE products.

The importance of Clearwire’s high profile at the show, then, was not really about its choice of WiMAX, although this is indeed the first of the truly broadband mobile standards. It was more about sending a signal that the WiMAX community is ready for the new age of ubiquitous wireless, cloud services and anywhere internet access. This community is dominated by carriers seeking to steal a march on their rivals by taking an early position in this new world, whether directly or via a partnership with a WiMAX network owner (like Sprint’s with Clearwire).

Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse was pursuing this theme in an investor update last week. He said that WiMAX would be “enormously important” for the company this year, and that “2010 is the year of 4G for Sprint”. This is because Sprint will be able to hold mobile broadband tariffs stable by offering more capacity, plus device choices like the new Overdrive portable hotspot, but its cost of delivery of broadband should be lower, the more traffic goes over WiMAX rather than 3G.

The Overdrive is one of a new breed of gadgets that allows a broadband connection to be shared between various devices, usually via Wi-Fi. The Novatel MiFi has been a popular example in 3G, but arch-rival Sierra Wireless has come up with the Overdrive for Sprint/Clearwire. It shares a WiMAX link between up to five Wi-Fi enabled products, or connects via EV-DO where the 4G network is not available.

This increases the value of a mobile broadband subscription, and doing this via WiMAX rather than 3G gives Sprint a clear competitive edge where that network is available, because the bandwidth and capacity will support more devices and a better experience. Such routers can be used as ad hoc hotspots for multiple users, or to connect a range of different gadgets such as netbooks, gaming consoles or cameras, as well as phones. Sprint said WiMAX was sufficient to support HD video or audio streaming simultaneously with web surfing and games playing.

The Overdrive will be sold at from January 10 in 10 markets, via Best Buy, whose CEO was also at the event. It will cost $100 after a $50 mail-in rebate, with two-year contract for Sprint’s 3G/4G data service, whose prices start at about $60 a month. Sprint now offers the Clearwire service in 27 markets across the US.

As Clearwire itself has seen with its own router from Cradlepoint, such devices not only enhance the perceived value of a broadband subscription and encourage users to commit to contracts, but bring the huge base of Wi-Fi enabled devices into the WiMAX fold, so that customers do not have to wait until they have a WiMAX laptop or MID before they invest in a connection.

Although the Overdrive garnered plenty of attention in Las Vegas, the biggest Clearwire news of the week came from the other side of the Atlantic, where the carrier launched WiMAX services in the Spanish city of Malaga. Although Clearwire owns spectrum in many parts of Europe, and even runs networks in some places such as Ireland and Denmark, this is its first standards-based WiMAX operation to go commercial in the continent.

It is likely to look for wholesale partners/investors, as in the US, and also to use its Spanish deployments as a proof of concept for mobile broadband in the 3.5 GHz band. Although this spectrum is available and affordable in many regions, it has been considered expensive for mobile deployments because of its short range, but as operators look to smaller cells for urban build-outs, it is gaining new interest, and Clearwire hopes to tap into this.

The Malaga offering covers 600,000 people so far, under the Instanet brand, and promises average download speeds of 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps, with peaks of 10 Mbps, at tariffs from €29.90 a month.

Clearwire CEO Bill Morrow also confirmed what he has previously hinted - that he is actively courting further wholesale partners and MVNOs to join Sprint and the cablecos. He told news agency Reuters that T-Mobile USA, Leap Wireless and MetroPCS could “make sense as partners” despite their competition with Sprint and also said Clearwire was in talks with further cablecos, satellite operators, smaller telcos and consumer electronics companies for wholesale partnerships. He added that the network would be ramped up to support a wider range of MVNOs.

Meanwhile, on the LTE front, Verizon Wireless demonstrated various device prototypes at CES to whet the appetite for the upcoming standard, as well as showing apps such as streaming video and live videoconferencing. The carrier said it was also collaborating with  partners, notably Ericsson, for vertical market applications in areas such as the enterprise or healthcare - expected to be an important additional revenue stream, to top up consumer broadband income.

The videoconferencing demo used portable units from Creative Labs, which replaced Wi-Fi and Ethernet in its InPerson system with LTE. It is working to shrink InPerson products and incorporate an LTE module based on its Zii chip to make live videoconferencing fully mobile. In another demo, the movie Up was streamed in 1080p HD video over LTE at 4Mbps to a small tablet made by Motorola, with a processor from Nvidia, embedded LTE, and a user interface from Innovative Converged Devices.