Telecom Ramblings

WiMAX operator Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR - chart, news) reported its Q4 numbers this morning, giving us another window into the progress of their buildout.  Total subscribers reached 688K, up 133K from the prior quarter.  Making up that number was an additional 90K retail subscribers in its twenty seven 4G markets plus 46K wholesale subscribers from its partners Sprint, Comcast, and TW Cable, less the usual churn in the company’s pre-WiMAX business.  

They also reported revenues of $79.9M, up $11.1M from Q3 alone and beating the projections of the street.  Adjusted EBITDA was an impressively negative -$295M, even moreso than last quarter’s -$193M, as the company continues to ramp its business.  But as usual the company’s numbers mean less than their progress in raising money, spending it, and gaining traction with subscribers.

With that in mind, the company expects to cover 120M people by the end of 2010, including major markets such as New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Houston, the SF Bay Area, Denver, Minneapolis, and Kansas City.  And of course, they’ll be spending $2.8-3.2B to do it.  As for subscriber levels, they project current 4G subscribers to triple.  Is that enough to placate the markets?  Well, who knows – the number is just a shot in the dark anyway, nobody really has any idea how well WiMAX will catch on this year.