Sprint and Clearwire's Mobile WiMAX partnership and Sprint's XOHM WiMax 4G Mobile Broadband brand were announced last year, and we've been waiting for the results ever since. Well, we'll have to wait just a little longer folks, but it's not all bad news. Clearwire Corporation and Sprint Nextel Corporation have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine their WiMax wireless broadband businesses to form a new communications company which will be named Clearwire. Just as we heard from the previous announcements, the new company will be focused on creating the first nationwide mobile WiMAX network in the United States, so it's only a matter of time before we see embedded Mobile WiMAX chipsets in laptops, mobile phones, PDAs, UMPC devices and consumer electronic equipment. Clearwire hopes to get the Wimax network deployed and ready to cover between 120 million and 140 million people in the U.S.
by the end of 2010.
"WiMAX
technology is expected to allow users to wirelessly access a range of
multimedia applications, such as live videoconferencing, recorded
video, games, large data files and more – anywhere in the network
coverage area."
Sprint and Clearwire combining their WiMAX businesses is no surprise, but the new Clearwire mobile broadband company, a $14.5 billion venture, also has investments from Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.
Here's the breakdown:
Comcast will invest $1.05 billion, Intel Capital will invest $1.0
billion, Time
Warner Cable will invest $550 million, Google will invest $500 million,
and Bright
House Networks will invest $100 million for an aggregate
total of $3.2 billion. Add Sprint’s contribution, which includes all of its 2.5 GHz wireless spectrum and
Xohm WiMAX related assets valued at $7.4 billion, and we can see that a nation-wide WiMax network is definitely on the way.