Clearwire will transfer the day-to-day management of its 4G network to Ericsson under a seven year managed services agreement.
Ericsson will be responsible for network engineering, operations and maintenance, including field services, 24X7 network monitoring, end-to-end engineering, provisioning and routine maintenance. Clearwire will retain ownership of all network assets and full responsibility for future technology and strategy decisions.
Approximately 700 Clearwire employees are expected to begin performing their network functions as Ericsson employees in locations around the United States before mid-year 2011.
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- Clearwire currently operates a nationwide WiMAX network but has been testing LTE. Specifically, Clearwire has conducted trials with Huawei Technologies and with Samsung Electronics to test multiple coexistence scenarios between LTE and WiMAX radio technologies. Trials in Phoenix used both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) configurations using 40 MHz of spectrum paired in 2 x 20 MHz contiguous channels (“LTE 2X”), and Time Division Duplex (TDD) configurations using 20 MHz of spectrum. The tests confirmed that the company’s LTE 2X trial network achieved peak download speeds on commercially available equipment and devices in excess of 90 Mbps and upload speeds of more than 30 Mbps. Clearwire expects to conclude the tests in Q1 2011.
- In 2009, Ericsson entered into a similar network management partnership with Sprint.