@ CTIA: Clearwire’s Ben Wolff Says There Is A Solution To The Capacity Problem — It’s Spectrum

At this morning’s CTIA keynote, Clearwire’s Ben Wolff, who recently moved from being CEO to co-Chairman of the company, delivered the one really clear and positive message the company has to tell right now — that it has more spectrum than anyone else. Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR) also announced that it was launching a test market in Silicon Valley to encourage developers to build applications for the wireless network.

The Kirkland, Wash.-based company has not been winning the publicity wars when it comes to its technology roadmap. While it has chosen WiMax — which is available today — many others are siding with LTE. The one clear difference, however, is that speeds and bandwidth are affected by how much spectrum a carrier owns. Wolff said today that a common person uses around 15 gigabytes a month — through services like Facebook, Flickr, Hulu and Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) — on their computer. That compares to just a few megabytes a month for the average feature phone, and 30 times as much for a smartphone, and hundreds more for a wireless-connected laptop. Clearwire has an average of 120 MHz of spectrum in most of its U.S. markets. Wolff: “If you have 120 MHz of spectrum, you can deliver 540 MB/sec. If you have 10 MHz, you have throughput of 45 MB/second.”

To solve the capacity crunch, he said there’s four things we need to do:

– Spectrum: You need about 40 MHz of spectrum at the minimum to deliver 4G, he said. Clearwire has an average of 120 MHz.
– Technology: You need the right infrastructure to deliver it. “There’s a clear difference between 3G and 4G, but between 4G standards, they are comparable. I don’t see a lot of difference between 4G technologies.”
– Network: It’s all IP, which increases bandwidth and performance.
– Devices: You need a lot of devices in order to acquire customers. Today, Clearwire has more than 30 laptop computers that have WiMax embedded in it. They’ll have 100 devices by the end of the year. This week it announced the ClearSpot, which allows you to plug in WiMax, and deliver Wi-Fi to multiple devices.

Application development: Clearwire announced today that it’s not just about devices, but applications. It will launch a 20-square mile test network in Silicon Valley to encourage developers to create applications. Access will be free to developer for at least a year. Partners will include: Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO), so it will work between in and between their campuses.