AT&T may be trying to block the merger of Sprint Nextel's and Clearwire's WiMAX activities, but it is also proceeding with its own, more limited, plans for the technology. The telco has been trialling WiMAX-class technologies in rural areas for a few years and now its CTO John Donovan says the system is "at the top of the list" as an alternative to copper.

Donovan said, in an interview with newspaper USA Today that the cost of copper roll-out was making it prohibitively expensive to build DSL for rural communities. This is the usual dilemma that has left the US' rural reaches sadly underserved by broadband and 3G - high cost of deployment, coupled with sparse and often low income populations, and falling broadband tariffs. This ROI-challenging combination could be addressed by broadband wireless, and specifically the standards-based economics of WiMAX, believes Donovan, echoing the view of WiMAX that has driven most of the world's actual deployments, away from the headlines about mobile broadband and 4G - that it is a natural leader for wireless DSL and fixed/nomadic access for underserved areas, and this market will be far easier to dominate than mobile applications.

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It is essential to Sprint Nextel's ambitions to steal a march on larger rivals in mobile broadband that its Clearwire joint venture is signed and sealed, and can kick off full scale roll-out, as soon as possible, in order to maximize the narrowing window with Verizon's and AT&T's LTE plans. One of those giants, AT&T, may have dashed hopes that the 'new Clearwire' will be a reality by year end, filing a petition with the FCC to bar the merger. Sprint Nextel agreed earlier this year to put its Xohm unit - home of its WiMAX network, 2.5GHz spectrum and open access mobile broadband vision - into a $14.5bn joint venture with Clearwire, owner of the other major US 2.5GHz WiMAX business, with backing from Intel, Google and three cablecos. This was an important move for the ailing Sprint, reducing the risk and cost of its mobile broadband activities but attracting sufficiently powerful backing to make it possible that its strong vision could actually be translated into reality, and a profitable business. Even with only part ownership, Xohm/Clearwire will remain Sprint's most promising asset, given its massive spectrum holdings and early march into 4G-class services - and the likely slow decline of the core CDMA business. This will only be true if the merger can be achieved quickly and without significant watering down of the agreed terms, otherwise even the huge spectrum capacity advantage of the new Clearwire (over 110MHz in most markets) will find it hard to outweigh the greater scale, market weight and funds of Verizon and AT&T with their newly acquired 700MHz spectrum and LTE plans. Read »