
Sprint is merging its WiMax
Xohm business with
Clearwire in
a $3.2 billion investment backed by Google, Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable
and others in a move to save the technology in the U.S. The deal originally
fell apart last November but we thought some investors would come forward. Craig
McCaw is bringing together some of his early day pioneers such as John Stanton
(from Western Wireless, later became VoiceStream, then T-Mobile) and Dan Hesse
of Sprint. So far Sprint has only shown it can lose money and faces rapid extinction
to Verizon and AT&T. WiMax has already lost momentum to spectrally
efficient LTE (4G), I'm still not sure they can gain market traction.
The real winner is Clearwire and a small pay
day for McCaw. Google wants to ensure it has a home for Android handsets and put
up $500 million. That's plenty of Zeros for the venture, but I don't think they'll
win.
I think Paul is dead on with this blog. Clearwire's small market approach is noble, however this type of investment will draw out a long struggle to compete against new technologies specifically LTE. This investment makes a statement, but I question Clearwires ability to perform on their technology platform.