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Clearwire, the Kirkland-based company that now operates wireless broadband assets from Sprint Nextel, is rolling into the WiMax market with the thunderbolt name Clear.

The company said Monday it determination sell its wireless broadband services under that family, which is replacing the Xohm brand that one of a firm Sprint Nextel has used since September.

In joining, Clearwire Chief Executive Ben Wolff said Monday that if a rival ensign to WiMax broadband becomes besides popular, Clearwire will be able to switch technologies.

The developments came as Clearwire’s merger with Sprint’s WiMax network was closed Friday.

WiMax, a technology sometimes described as Wi-Fi on steroids, is considered the next generation — the fourth — of wireless broadband technology, one that provides Internet access covering entire markets and providing faster data speeds than most current third-generation cellular broadband networks.

Sprint began offering WiMax service in Baltimore in September but hasn’cheek by jowl disclosed how many customers have signed up. Clearwire plans to begin selling WiMax in Portland in the first position of 2009 and already has about 400,000 customers upon a pre-WiMax network in 46 cities, including Seattle.

Wolff told analysts and reporters instead of the period of a conference call Monday that the company will focus on upgrading that system to WiMax next year, as well as breach commercial purpose in several other cities.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint testament own 51 percent of Clearwire, while investors in the original Clearwire, founded by alveolate pioneer Craig McCaw, wish own about 22 percent. The rest of the company desire be owned by investors including Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks, which have put in a full of $3.2 billion in cash.

One issue Wolff discussed Monday was how the company can move from WiMax to a technology called Long Term Evolution, or LTE, if enough customers want it. Clearwire chose WiMax inasmuch as it may be four years before LTE is ready for commercial appliance, he said.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless, Sprint’sitting larger competitors, be the subject of said they resoluteness employment LTE to build completely so-called fourth-generation networks, which will provide faster Internet access than those used today. Nortel Networks, North America’s biggest maker of phone equipment, has in like manner said it will devote more resources to LTE than WiMax.

“Everyone else in the world is using LTE technology,” related Christopher King, an algebraist at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore. He has a hold rating on Clearwire and doesn’t own any of its shares. “They distress to be flexible, certainly, to the length that investors are skeptical” on the point WiMax.

The technologies have a lot in common, and Clearwire’s suppliers will be able to deliver rigging for an LTE network if needed, he said.

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