In pictures: Clearwire's prospects through Korean eyes

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SEOUL--As Clearwire prepares to digest another $1.5 billion in funding (Sprint Nextel, Intel, Time Warner Cable and others are ponying up the cash, -read our article [4]), investors likely are wondering what the future holds for the country's largest mobile WiMAX operator. One possible answer may lie across the Pacific, in South Korea, where operators KT and SK Telecom are three years into their own WiMAX deployments.

Launched in 2006, WiBro (the South Korean brand for WiMAX) now covers around 50 percent of South Korea's population, and the nation's two WiMAX operators expect to cover the vast majority of South Koreans by 2011. The mobile service supports real-world speeds of around 4 Mbps on the downlink and around 1 Mbps on the uplink, and costs around $17 per month for 30 GB of data. So far, there are around 250,000 WiMAX subscribers in Korea. 

A recent press junket sponsored by Samsung afforded a first-hand look at the country's mobile WiMAX service, stretching from the retail outlets where shoppers can buy the latest WiMAX gizmos to the on-the-ground locations where the service would be used.

As Clearwire lights up larger and larger markets with mobile WiMAX services--the carrier plans to cover 120 million Americans in 80 markets by the end of 2010--the situation in South Korea could foreshadow the Clearwire's gameplan.

[1]Click here for a photo tour of South Korea's WiMAX [1]