US WiMAX operator Clearwire used its financial results announcement yesterday to reveal plans to spend up to US$1.9 billion this year on extending the network beyond its lone live ‘Clear’ WiMAX market in Portland, Oregon.”During 2009, we expect to launch our Clear branded mobile broadband services in a number of new markets such as Las Vegas, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas/Ft. Worth and in our largest existing markets, namely Baltimore, Seattle, Honolulu and Charlotte,” said Benjamin G. Wolff, CEO of Clearwire. Wolff added that New York, Boston, Washington DC, Houston and the San Francisco Bay area will be activated in 2010, by which time the company claims it could potentially provide coverage to up to 120 million people. The company did, however, state that it is keeping a close eye on the economy and may still speed up or slowdown the buildout.

Clearwire already offers a ‘pre-WiMAX’ broadband wireless connection to almost 50 markets in the US, and yesterday’s expansion plans form the company’s strategy to begin switching those markets to WiMAX. At the beginning of this year Clearwire activated its first mobile WiMAX network in Portland, its first since its high-profile asset merger with Sprint Nextel was completed at the end of November. The new venture has received a US$3.2 billion cash investment from Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks and aims to rollout mobile WiMAX services across the US in the 2.5GHz spectrum band. In addition to news of regional launches, Clearwire said yesterday it will release a dualmode EV-DO/WiMAX modem this summer, enabling Clearwire’s WiMAX customers to use Sprint’s cellular EV-DO network when out of range of WiMAX deployments. Meanwhile the company reported a US$118 million fourth-quarter net loss, compared to a loss of US$108.3 million for the Sprint WiMAX business in the year-ago quarter. Revenues were US$20.5 million and total subscriber count was 475,000. Net loss for the twelve months ended December 31, 2008 was US$432.6 million, compared to US$224.7 million for the Sprint WiMAX business in 2007. In a statement, Clearwire said that the increased net loss “reflects US$83 million of expenses related to the transactions incurred in the fourth quarter 2008.”