RUMOR: CLEARWIRE SWITCHING TO LTE FROM WiMAX

In an interview with CNET, Clearwire’s chief operating officer Erik Prusch said that the carrier may eventually switch from WiMAX to LTE. “WiMAX to date has been a very good technology choice for us,” Prusch said. “We were able to take advantage of the speed to market before LTE was even a glimmer in anyone’s eye. But we recognize the ecosystem in the U.S. will be larger for LTE than WiMAX, so we are conscious of that.” Last summer Clearwire confirmed that it would begin testing 4G LTE trials in the U.S., and it expected to demonstrate that it “[could] deliver significantly higher performance using LTE technologies than any other operator.”

It’s unclear how those tests went, but Prusch did backtrack a bit and say that a switch isn’t definite, and that Clearwire needs to keep its eye on LTE and its ecosystem before pulling the trigger and setting a definite timeline.

Last month Sprint — which owns a majority stake of Clearwire — said that it has agreed to pay the company $1 billion through 2012 for fees associated with the use of Clearwire’s 4G WiMAX network.