Friday Q&A: Clearwire Philadelphia General Manager Andrew Kupiec
You might be surprised to hear that Clearwire’s General Manager of Philadelphia Andrew Kupiec thinks the city’s mobile market isn’t crowded. It’s a big market, he says, and there’s plenty of room in the proverbial sandbox.
“Mobility and speed is our focus … We don’t need to unseat any of the incumbents, the major players in the market,” the Phoenixville resident—who grew up outside Bryn Mawr—said in a telephone interview with Technically Philly Tuesday.
Since we reported that Clear’s next-generation 4G mobile network had soft-launched in early October, the company has been on a major marketing push in Philadelphia. In recent weeks, you might have spotted branded buses and billboards or browsed across localized Internet ads with the company’s slick, green logo.
But it’s just as likely that you’ve walked past one of Comcast’s High-Speed 2Go 4G wireless demo kiosks that have been setup throughout the city. Sprint, too, quietly launched 4G service in late October.
The timing is no coincidence. Sprint and Comcast both have a financial stake in the Clearwire WiMAX network, and are utilizing the Philly rollout to offer their own next generation high-speed services. Yesterday, it was announced that Sprint will invest $1.176 billion in Clearwire, with Comcast promising an additional $176 million in a new round of funding. Google, an initial investor in the network, has chosen not to fund Clearwire in this round. Some analysts see Google’s decision as a loss off faith in WiMAX technology while next generation Long Term Evolution technology gains support from major network carriers.
If we ought not say Philly is crowded, then we can certainly say that residents have mobile broadband options, and more to come. We talked to Kupiec about the Clearwire roll-out, how it is differentiating itself from Sprint and Comcast, what the company is doing to address the digital divide and more, after the jump.
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