by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
After the technology stock crash and the dot-com bubble burst of the late 1990s, launching anything technological over the past six or seven years might have been a little risky.
Darren Nichols took part in that risk, and luck was on his side.
Nichols is the Jacksonville market general manager for Clearwire, the wireless broadband Internet provider that first launched its service in Jacksonville in February of 2003.
Since joining the Kirkland, Wash.-headquartered company, Nichols has watched an unknown Internet company grow from test market to market competitor. However, when Nichols joined the fledgling Internet provider, he admits that he was a little nervous about his and the company’s futures.
“I was worried at first just because of the past with the dot-coms,” he said. “I have been in technology for a pretty good while and you are used to hearing all of these promises and visions of grandeur and everything but once I got hired and I was with the organization two or three months, then I understood exactly who was behind it and the goals and aspirations of what the company wanted to accomplish. Then I definitely believed that we would expand rapidly.”
And the company has definitely grown locally.
Since its initial launch, Clearwire’s service “footprint” has gone from covering just the downtown area to covering most of the major neighborhoods in Jacksonville, including the beaches, Ponte Vedra, Arlington, Baymeadows, Mandarin, Fleming Island and San Marco, and future coverage growth is already planned, Nichols said. Just a few weeks ago, Clearwire effectively doubled its coverage area by launching service in Orange Park and the Westside.
The company also has grown outside of Jacksonville. Though Jacksonville was the first Clearwire city, the company now offers service in more than 20 markets in the United States and in three countries in Europe.
Clearwire is different from other forms of high speed Internet access because it works more like a cell phone than traditional Internet service. Clearwire broadcasts its signal through cell towers using a licensed frequency. Subscribers are issued a modem that is about the size of a large paperback book. Once it is plugged into a computer, the user can receive high-speed Internet anywhere in any of Clearwire’s coverage areas.
Though it is still the low man on the totem pole of local Internet providers, Nichols said he feels certain that Clearwire will soon give the big boys a run for the money.
“The telephone company and the cable company have been here a while so I think they have done a very good job with broadband but we have also done very well here,” he said. “Our sales have exceeded expectations and so far we have been very successful.”
For Nichols, Clearwire is the most recent step in a long history with the telecommunications industry. Nichols first joined the telecom arena when one-way paging was all the rage.
“I was in high-tech when paging was high-tech,” he said.
Nichols had worked for a nationwide paging company for about seven years when he said he saw what he calls “the writing on the wall.” He soon realized that paging was about to be phased out by something called the cellular telephone and Nichols quickly made the jump to the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). His time with CLEC is when Nichols said he learned about data transfer and was best prepared for his next career move to the wireless broadband Internet provider market with Clearwire.
Now having been at Clearwire for a little more than two years, Nichols said he has gotten over his initial concerns and is enjoying watching the company change the way people use the Internet.
“There is a lot of opportunity here,” he said. “The future is very bright as far as what we are going to be able to do technology-wise. We are the only company in Jacksonville that is using this type of technology.
“Traditionally broadband Internet has been sold to a location. We sell broadband Internet to a person. That seems to be a great differentiator for us. I truly believe we make the Internet more simple. You can go to the mall, buy our product, go home, set it up and you are up and running. It’s very flexible. You can use it at your home. You can take it to your office.
“You can take it to your friends house. It is really Internet on your terms.”