Sprint WiMAX WaTCH: Goodbye XOHM, Hello Clearwire
We have a new twist of events in our WiMAX WaTCH: Sprint, after ditching Clearwire, is back together with them again. That's not the crazy part, though, the crazy part is that Sprint, along with Clearwire, has managed to cobble together $3.2 Billion US in investment to create a band new company, also to be called Clearwire. The money's coming from various sources, inclding Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks.
In other words, it looks like Sprint is dropping XOHM in favor of using this new company (which they'll control 51% of, by the way), though it may be that they'll keep XOHM as the Sprint-branded version of Clearwire's WiMAX services. These services, by the way, will also be available to re-sell to other companies:
“We've made an excellent start developing XOHM WiMAX services. Contributing those advances to a strongly backed new company - in which we'll hold the largest interest - provides Sprint with additional financial flexibility and allows Sprint management to leverage and focus on our core business.
”Additionally, the agreements allowing the new company and our cable company investors to bundle and resell Sprint's third-generation wireless services strengthen the distribution of our current services while reducing the complexity and enhancing Sprint's cable relationships,“ Hesse added. -[Clearwire Press Release]
Given Sprint's many, many woes, it's to be expected that they would do something to shake things up a bit. It remains to be seen whether or not this is the right move, but it smells to us like Clearwire is going to just offer ”big fat pipe“ services for data and voice. We've been begging for that since the inception of WMExperts -- here's to hoping that the new company can offer that.
In any case, it's clear now why Sprint signed a deal to use Google's services on their future handsets, innit?
