« April 2008 | Main | June 2008 »

May 21, 2008

Schools Profit from Clearwire, Sprint License Purchases

By Glenn Fleishman

The LA Times uncovers a fact that those of us following WiMax know: schools are reaping a huge payday and other help from their spectrum licenses: The LA Times has a lot of specifics about how academic institutions, granted licenses for distance learning and broadcasting, have managed to take in hundreds of millions of dollars that benefit their students and campuses. The 2.5 GHz band that these schools hold geographic licenses to can be leased to commercial entities under rules set by the FCC to make better use of the band. Some of the sublessors have paid for schools to move broadcasts from analog to digital, improving their service and freeing up bandwidth, as well as licensing fees. The paper estimates that 1,400 agreements have been signed to lease spectrum.

Posted by Glennf at 1:08 PM | Comments (0)

May 7, 2008

Official Sprint/Clearwire Details Out

By Glenn Fleishman

The press release ships: The new $14.5b (estimated) joint venture between Clearwire and Sprint will be called Clearwire. That’s another ego win on top of the financial win for one Mister Craig McCaw. Clearwire “2” will be headed by current CEO Ben Wolff, and the president will be Sprint’s very smart CTO and mobile broadband chief Barry West. They’ll headquarter in Kirkland, Wash., with R&D in Herndon, Virg. Sprint will own 51 percent, Clearwire 27 percent, and the new investors 22 percent. Their new announced plan is to pass 120 to 140m people by 2010, which is fairly modest, but Sprint will be retaining its current 3G business. Clearwire, Sprint, and all the cable investors announced 3G and 4G sales deals that will allow all partners to resell all 3G and 4G services. That was apparently an earlier missing piece for cable operators, who didn’t want to invest in a service that wouldn’t be rolled out across their entire territories for some time.

Posted by Glennf at 7:44 AM | Comments (0)

May 6, 2008

Sprint, Clearwire in Imminent $12b Deal

By Glenn Fleishman

Finally: The Wall Street Journal reports that a joint venture is almost ready to announce that will combine Clearwire with Sprint’s wireless broadband division in a $12b company that will receive an infusion of $3.2b from outside firms, including Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Google. The deal could be announced tomorrow. The cable involvement is clear: Cable providers may have a path to a 50 Mbps broadband vision (a standard that’s rolling out now), but they need mobile partners for data and voice, and Sprint has been that partner for the four big MSO (multiple system operators). This deal would validate the WiMax approach, and ensure that a national network would be built with enough spectrum in each market to provide the greatest possible bandwidth. It would be yet another win for Craig McCaw, of course, the man who essentially dictates through his ability to be smart ahead of the market what wireless voice and broadband will look like tomorrow, always tomorrow.

Posted by Glennf at 3:34 PM | Comments (0)