Clearwire Corp. is expanding its market focus with a second retail brand, dubbed “Rover." Targeted at the 18-24-year-old urban demographic, the prepaid service will cost $50 per month, $20 per week or $5 per day for unlimited 4G mobile WiMAX usage. The operator is clearly (no pun intended) taking on the 3G laptop market with a mix of faster throughput, no usage limits and no-hassle service signup.
Rover can be used with the new Rover Stick USB modem ($99.99) or the Rover Puck ($149.99), which is a MiFi-type hotspot creator that can connect up to eight Wi-Fi devices. Both are 4G only, though executives said they would consider a 3G-4G hybrid device if the market demanded it.
"We felt there was a vacuum in the market in terms of inspired devices," said Clearwire's chief commercial officer, Mike Sievert, during a Webcast.
He also stressed that prepaid is no longer the province of the credit-challenged or the euphemistically named “unbanked," noting that nearly 20 percent of mobile users in the United States – 59 million people – are on prepaid plans. “This brand is addressing a compelling new audience in the mobile broadband space: Internet-addicted members of Generation Y, who have never known a world without Internet or wireless," said Sievert.
"Consumers in this segment have their own unique identity and expect different things," he added. “They don’t want complexity, they don’t want commitments and they don’t want to be tied down. Rover represents the convergence of pay-as-you-go and true mobile broadband without limits. Younger people want to buy services their way."
Sievert also said he expected the offer to have wide appeal vis a vis current 3G prepaid offers. “Those interested in prepaid mobile broadband, well, what they have had to date is pretty limited. They have slower 3G service with data caps that curtail high-bandwidth services like video chat and streaming, and bland devices."
The brand will co-exist with the CLEAR retail postpaid brand, as well as brands from Clearwire’s various MVNO/wholesale partners, like Comcast Corp., Sprint-Nextel Corp. and Cbeyond. It gives Clearwire a pay-as-you-go arrow in the quiver of the carrier’s “network of networks" policy, which is a strategy to serve an unlimited number of niches through differently positioned brands.
“The fundamental truth about brands is that some will appeal more to some than others," Sievert said. "When it comes to the megabrands, if someone decides it’s not for them, then the brand has lost that opportunity. Not for us. Our subscribers have a choice between wholesale partners, CLEAR, and now Rover."
ROVER is not available on a wholesale basis, but a private label version isn't off the table, either. “These things are linked in a certain way," Sievert said. “When we do things on the retail side of our business, it opens up wholesale opportunities for us. So we'll have to wait and see."
Seth Cummings, GM for the Rover brand, said the launch represents something called "Evology," the evolution of technology and the way people use it. "People don’t like what they feel when they’re on the clock," he noted. "The magic of the Internet is about being unconstrained."
At launch the devices and service can be bought at retail in Houston and St. Louis, but the service van be used anywhere in the Clearwire footprint. Commercial availability will be expanded to Clearwire's other cities. While the carrier is still evaluating distribution, execs said that it can be purchased through master agents, CLEAR retail stores, Best Buy and the Website; gift cards, debit/credit or cash are accepted.
