Clearwire-Sprint Deal Soon?

Unstrung.com had an interesting article yesterday regarding the 'on again, off again, on again' relationship between Sprint and Clearwire. They quote a recent report by Eric Kainer of ThinkEquity Partners, where he suggested that "is "close to the finish line" in striking a new network deal with Sprint, which would be financially backed by Best Buy, Google, and SK Telecom".

Kainer went on to speculate that a deal could be announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, or soon after. "I believe that's the most likely time for Clearwire to announce the deal," he says.

While many have believed that Google were looking to win the 700 MHz spectrum currently being auctioned, it is increasingly being suggested that they were really acting as a stalking horse, bidding to ensure that the bids went high enough to trigger the 'open access' provision. Now that bids have passed the $4.6bn reserve, Kainer suggests that they are turning their attention to the 2.4 GHz WiMAX spectrum that would be part of any Sprint / Clearwire relationship. The attraction to Google would be able to "support tens of millions of users" nationwide in 2009 as part of the Xohm venture, whereas any nationwide network utilizing the 700 MHz spectrum would not be ready for prime time until 2012.

Clearly, Google's deep pockets could significantly help the more financially-challenged Sprint and Clearwire fund the roll-out of the Xohm WiMAX network in a more timely manner. Only time will tell if this has been their plan all along.

As we've said before, NextPhase supports any initiative that accelerates the benefits of mass manufacturing, bringing down the cost of WiMAX CPEs (Consumer Premise Equipment). If you remember back to the early days of WiFi, CPEs were $500, and yet within a few years, they're built into everything and their effective price to the consumer is zero. The same will happen with WiMAX technology, and we predict that it will happen even faster. While early mass market devices will focus on the 2.4 and 3.5 GHz bands, we believe that chipsets that auto-detect / auto-adjust to any existing of future WiMAX bands (700 MHz to 6.1 GHz).