Despite eliminating 1,250 jobs, recording a quarterly loss of $16 billion, and writing down its investment in Clearwire, Time Warner Cable (TWC) expects to progress its WiMAX strategy (with Clearwire) later this year.
During its February 4th earnings call, TWC President and CEO Glenn Britt stated, “”we expect to make meaningful progress in further defining our wireless strategy.” That strategy is based on the MSOs investment and partnership with Clearwire. “We do see opportunities over time to offer a broad array of services to a variety of devices over both wired and wireless transmission technologies. As part of this, we plan to roll out an initial offering in conjunction with Clearwire in at least one city later this year,” according to Britt.
Some analysts believe that a TWC WiMax deployment in Dallas, TX is most likely among the 2009 possibilities, considering recent hiring activity Clearwire has underway in Texas. New York is a bit further out, according to Unstrung which notes that Clearwire has recently posted engineering-related job ads for the New York and New Jersey area. However, a buildout in that region could take up to two years to complete.
Time Warner Cable was the latest company to take a hit from Clearwire’s declining share price: it wrote off $367 million of its $500 million investment (Intel was an even bigger loser). Perhaps Clearwire will reveal it’s deployment plans when it reports results, expected later this month.
COO Landel Hobbs said Time Warner Cable also plans to expand its metered (cable based) broadband service to more cities this year. Currently the company offers a mere 40 GB per month before charging overage fees. In contrast, Comcast offers a 250 GB monthly cap and AT&T offers a 150 GB per month limit before charging fees. We wonder if the metered service will also extend to WiMAX when it becomes available.
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