Best Buy Connect now '4G' enabled

Best Buy Co. Inc. (BBY) bolstered its Best Buy Connect-branded mobile broadband offering with the addition of “4G” services through a previously announced agreement with Clearwire Corp. (CLWR). The service, which was originally hatched last summer, builds on top of the Best Buy Connect’s 3G coverage that is provided through an agreement with Sprint Nextel Corp. (S).
The new offering is available through the big-box retailer as an option on 23 computing devices – mostly laptop and notebook computers. Pricing for the service is $45 per month for unlimited data transmission with or without a contract. For those selecting to sign a two-year agreement, Best Buy will provide a $150 subsidy on equipment and waive the $35 activation fee.
The retailer continues to offer the 3G version of the service, which includes four tiers of price plans. Those start at the appealing price of “free” for 100 megabytes of data transmission per month; $20 per month for 250 MB; $40 per month for 500 MB; and $60 per month for 5 gigabytes of data transmission. Those plans, except for the free offering, are just slightly higher than what is available directly through wireless carriers for similar data buckets.
Best Buy also handles all of the service activation, billing, hardware and connection support.
Clearwire has started to gain serious momentum behind its wholesale offering with virtually all of its net customer additions during the fourth quarter of last year from those partners. Customers signed up through its wholesale partners generally provide for much lower average revenue per user than direct customers additions, but the acquisition costs are virtually zero.
Sprint Nextel, which owns a controlling stake in Clearwire, remains its largest wholesale partner. Other commercially launched partners include Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable.
The wholesale space is expected to become more crowded over the next several years as LightSquared continues to make noise about its plans to launch a hybrid satellite/terrestrial network that it plans to exclusively lease access to. The company has already signed up a handful of partners, with comments that it was in discussion with more than a dozen other potential partners.