Sprint Willing to Fill Clearwire's Coffers

[Dan]

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/172179/sprint_willing_to_fill_clearwires_coffers.html

Sprint Nextel is willing to invest more money in Clearwire, the WiMax operator it helped create last year, and plans to maintain its 51 percent ownership in the company, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said Thursday.


See site for full story

[Bohemian Iconoclast]

From the article: The money Sprint invests in Clearwire is money it would otherwise be spending to build up capacity in its 3G network, Hesse said. WiMax, which is designed to deliver higher speed than Sprint's 3G EV-DO network, is a more economical way to build out mobile data capacity in a given market, he said. Clearwire says its network delivers between 4Mb per second and 6Mbps to each subscriber.

If Sprint is successful, it could seriously alter the 3G marketspace...but get a load of Sprint's plans... "Once 4G is launched in a market, our capex in that market basically stops," he said.

Capex refers to capital expenditures on 3G. If you are unhappy with your 3G service in a market with WiMax, this is your warning that it won't be getting any better.

Like Vision getting buggy when PowerVision (EVDO) was introduced, they are driving their customers to the next level by not continuing the old one...

BIG PICTURE: Sprint needs this more than many realize. Verizon is rolling out 700 Mhz spectrum next year that promises the whole country will be in their footprint (i.e. end of dead zones they are now advertizing), as the signal penetrates buildings. What will the other carriers do to compete?