World Telecom Group (WTG) in July became the first national business-to-business master agent to sell CLEAR, a mobile WiMAX service offered by Clearwire Communications LLC, an operating subsidiary of Clearwire Corp., (CLWR).
Clearwire is engaged in a multiyear network buildout to make its 4G wireless service available to 80 U.S. markets covering up to 120 million people by the end of 2010.
CLEAR already is available in Atlanta; Baltimore; Las Vegas; and Portland, Ore. Beginning Sept. 1, the service is coming to Boise, Idaho; Bellingham, Wash.; and eight Texas markets, including Abilene, Amarillo, Corpus Christi, Killeen/Temple, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, Waco and Wichita Falls. Additional markets planned to launch in 2009 include Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle. In 2010, the company plans to bring the service to New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Houston and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Although CLEAR has been more of a consumer product to date, WTG will be focused on pitching the SMB market for mobility solutions, and in some cases primary bandwidth, and larger enterprises for business continuity/disaster recovery solutions.
WTG agents will be focusing on the CLEAR mobile and business products. The former is priced at $40 for the 2GB service, $50 for unlimited bandwidth and $10 for a day pass, at speeds of 4mbps downstream and 1mbps upstream.
CLEAR business-focused fixed wireless service is running at $55 monthly for fast business Internet (3mbps down and 550kbps up), and $75 monthly for faster business Internet (6mbps down and 1mbps up). Shared mobile Internet services also are available and range from 15GB to 30GB packages at $75 to $125 monthly respectively, which can be shared across employees. These products have the same down and up speeds as the fixed plans.
Finally, there is a Combo plan option allowing the customer to choose two products. For example, the customer can use 2GB mobile at the office and the Fast Internet option at home; or the customer can just use 2GB mobile times two. The combo plan is $55 per month, or $65 per month for the unlimited bandwidth version. Speeds are up to 3mbps up, or 6mbps up for unlimited, and 1mbps down.
