Clearwire has a proposal in to provide a WiMax wireless network for Brooklyn Park. This will be the first WiMax network that I know of in this area. No investment by the Brooklyn Park; customers would pay for the service. Ostensibly they want to provide connectivity to people on lower incomes but prices they are mentioning do not seem very “low income” to me. (Maybe there is a tier they are not mentioning.)

US Internet president Joe Caldwell says that Clearwire’s arrival “doesn’t bother me a bit.” That’s interesting given that early on in the Minneapolis Wi-Fi deployment, US Internet was hopeful that other cities surrounding Minneapolis would want to contract with US Internet for wireless services. There was even talk of customers having the ability to use Wi-Fi across city borders if US Internet was the provider.

I would tend to be worried if I was US Internet. I don’t think anything is stopping a company like Clearwire from providing services in Minneapolis if they could hang the transmitters. They could target areas of high usage like downtown and not be under any contract to cover the City. That could be a potent threat to US Internet’s business model. (This is all conjecture on my part, of course. There could be something legal prohibiting another wireless provider.)

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