Clear Mobitel

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freitasm

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#92463 30-Oct-2011 09:22

According to Communications Day:

Clear Mobitel (NZ) Ltd aims to become New Zealand’s fourth mobile carrier. Harpal Mann, the founder and CEO of the UK-based parent Clear Mobitel Ltd told CommsDay the company plans to build an LTE network and intends to bid in the 700 MHz spectrum auction.

Mann said Clear Mobitel was a participant in the Rural Broadband Initiative a year ago working with its international telecoms partners. He said we: “withdrew our application in the last minute after it was clear to us that it was a foregone conclusion the award was going to Telecom NZ.”

FTTH NOT VIABLE: He said the company’s proposal was to include a 4G/LTE portion as “we do not believe fibre-to-the-Home is a viable solution given New Zealand alone cannot sustain the cost of FTTH equipment given the rest of the world is moving to 4G/LTE. In the United States of America, Verizon scrapped all Fibre plans three years ago and are today deploying 4G/LTE.”

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#539211 30-Oct-2011 09:42

interesting times ahead

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#539215 30-Oct-2011 09:59

You can never have enough wireless.... but of course, a lot of fibre backhaul will be needed for capacity density and pure transmission....

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#539221 30-Oct-2011 10:37

Wireless is a complimentary product to fixed infrastructure. It isn't, and never will be, a total replacement due to the simple, but often overlooked issue, that spectrum is a finite resource.

Verizon pulled the pin on FiOS upgrades due to the cost, something that doesn't affect NZ or Aussie or a growing number of other countries in the same way. A Government funded/subsidised network with guaranteed wholesale access is very different to a telco having to go it alone.

freitasm

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#539223 30-Oct-2011 10:49

You can visit the Clear Mobitel main website and select your country. It looks like they are operational in UK and Channel Islands, but with "USA" and "New Zealand" listed but not as active links to select.

Interestingly India is missing, although What's News lists "Jersey, Cornwall, Guernsey and India"

Also interesting to see the "we are there" listing New Zealand. Roaming?

I know, know... Will this be another Econet, that one day turned into 2degrees?

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#539228 30-Oct-2011 10:59

I am currently in the UK and i can't find anything about them operating here. I can find a few BBC articles saying they have purchased some frequency (dated march 2010) but that's about it.

They are not on the wiki list of network operators which seems to have every other company under the sun on it.

As far as i can find in an hour of googling they don't have an operational network anywhere or are reselling someones else network either.

Would love to see another provider but need to see some hard evidence they are legit first.

ajw

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#539234 30-Oct-2011 11:15

Nice website but have they got any money. Doesn't say anywhere on their website what other country's they are operating mobile networks.

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#539237 30-Oct-2011 11:41

The idea seems about right, even the Government here has admitted that fibre is not necessarily the "do all" solution. Imagine the costs of running a fibre cable out to a rural customer 20km from town vs. set up a reasonably high powered tower in town.

ajw: Nice website but have they got any money. Doesn't say anywhere on their website what other country's they are operating mobile networks.

http://www.clearmobitel.com/about/investors.asp

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kingjj

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#539247 30-Oct-2011 12:06

A quick WHOIS search shows the .com domain was registered in 2009, and is hosted on a GoDaddy server hosting 1290 other domains. Only the .com and .net are registered, with other flavours of the domain still available. The Ltd company in NZ was also registered in 2009, but interestingly Harpal Mann wasn't listed as a director until Oct 2010.

The website seems pretty basic and was generated in Microsoft FrontPage 5.0. Simple things like the 'follow on' social networks feature are yet to be setup correctly (only FB is active, twitter, linked in and G+ are not). Having all social networking ready asap should be the first call for a modern telecommunications company that advertises them on the front page.

I'm going to throw my hat out there and say that nothing will ever come of this companies plans to launch a network in NZ or elsewhere in the World. Potentially maybe a MNVO but never a network (although I'm happy for them to prove me wrong).

ajw

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#539248 30-Oct-2011 12:08

kingjj: A quick WHOIS search shows the .com domain was registered in 2009, and is hosted on a GoDaddy server hosting 1290 other domains. Only the .com and .net are registered, with other flavours of the domain still available. The Ltd company in NZ was also registered in 2009, but interestingly Harpal Mann wasn't listed as a director until Oct 2010.

The website seems pretty basic and was generated in Microsoft FrontPage 5.0. Simple things like the 'follow on' social networks feature are yet to be setup correctly (only FB is active, twitter, linked in and G+ are not). Having all social networking ready asap should be the first call for a modern telecommunications company that advertises them on the front page.

I'm going to throw my hat out there and say that nothing will ever come of this companies plans to launch a network in NZ or elsewhere in the World. Potentially maybe a MNVO but never a network (although I'm happy for them to prove me wrong).

I agree.

freitasm

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#539265 30-Oct-2011 13:14

codyc1515: The idea seems about right, even the Government here has admitted that fibre is not necessarily the "do all" solution. Imagine the costs of running a fibre cable out to a rural customer 20km from town vs. set up a reasonably high powered tower in town.

We already know this, hence Vodafone providing LTE as last mile solution, with Telecom providing backhaul and fixed line. This was decided months ago.