The Podium
Blog posts tagged with 'Clearwire'
Monday, December 17
By Brad
As expected, Sprint has made a move to greatly bolster its spectrum holdings. Via Ryan Kim of GigaOm:
Sprint followed through on its bid to buy the remaining portion of Clearwire that it doesn’t own, and will spend $2.2 billion or $2.97 per share to complete the deal, the operator announced Monday. The deal by Sprint, which already owned 51.7 percent of Clearwire, values the 4G provider at about $10 billion, including net debt and spectrum lease obligations of $5.5 billion.
Friday, December 14
By Brad
Earlier this week, it was rumored Sprint would make a bid to completely buy out mobile broadband provider Clearwire. Now, Hayley Tsukayama of the Washington Post reports, the rumors have become reality:
Sprint has made a buyout bid for the remaining stake of Clearwire that it does not already own, a move that would bolster the company’s spectrum portfolio.
The nation’s third-largest carrier currently owns 51 percent of Clearwire.
If the deal is finalized, Sprint’s all important spectrum holdings would increase substantially.
Wednesday, December 12
By Brad
Via Mike Dano of Fierce Wireless, it looks like Sprint may be looking to absorb all of wireless broadband provider Clearwire:
Sprint Nextel is reportedly in active discussions to purchase the 49 percent of Clearwire that it doesn’t already own, according to media reports. The transaction could be finalized by the end of this year.
CNBC, citing two people familiar with the situation, reported that Sprint is investigating the purchase. Separately, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, also citing unnamed sources, later reported the same thing. Both CNBC and the Journal noted that Sprint executives are talking to Clearwire shareholders such as Intel and Comcast, but that it’s unclear what Sprint would pay to acquire Clearwire’s outstanding shares. Clearwire currently commands a market value of $1.8 billion and holds around $5 billion in debt.
Sprint already owns 50.8% of Clearwire, but increasing their investment could substantially help in building out their LTE network.
Friday, October 19
By Brad
At the Washington Post, Hayley Tsukayama reports that Sprint, which is currently in the process of being purchased by the Japanese wireless company Softbank, is looking to make an acquisition of its own:
Sprint is moving to buy an addition stake in Clearwire, giving it control of the broadband firm.
Sprint already owns 48 percent of Clearwire — a partnership that has allowed Sprint to build out the 4G network it needs to compete with AT&T and Verizon.
If the deal goes through, Sprint’s spectrum holdings would increase dramatically. Yet another example of secondary market transactions being one of the fastest ways to get spectrum to market.
Friday, March 23
By Brad
Fierce Wireless’ Sue Marek reports that in a recent appearance at Goldman Sachs TMT Leveraged Finance Conference, Clearwire CFO Hope Cochran announced usage of the mobile broadband provider’s network increase by a staggering 705% from 2010-2011.
That’s translates to a lot of data bombarding the company’s bombarding the company’s network, and it really hammers home just how much more capacity all mobile broadband providers will need to keep up with demand. In fact, Clearwire’s CFO herself believes that without more spectrum, the company’s competitors could hit rough going. As Marek writes:
Cochran then honed in on the fact that Clearwire believes these operators will run out of capacity on their LTE networks very quickly, and will therefore quickly need to off-load their traffic onto Clearwire’s network. When asked by investors how quickly Clearwire thinks the big operators will hit their capacity limits, Cochran said she thinks it will happen very quickly. “We see our own trends and that is the appetite for data is tremendous.”
While the spectrum crunch may turn out to be a benefit for Clearwire, it’s not hard to see the negative impact a lack of available airwaves could have on the wireless industry as a whole if the spectrum crunch is not smartly managed. The FCC needs to act fast to auction off spectrum, for example, so we can begin the process of getting to where spectrum is usable and benefiting consumers.
Friday, August 19
By Brad
Olga Kharif and Alex Sherman of Bloomberg report that Sprint is in talks with cable giant Comcast to increase Sprint’s ownership of Clearwire in order to keep plans afloat to build out next-generation LTE mobile broadband:
Sprint and Comcast, which are already investors in Clearwire along with Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks LLC, are discussing ways to provide funding to the money-losing Kirkland, Washington-based company so it can build out its high-speed wireless network. Clearwire plans to spend about $600 million to upgrade its network to so-called long-term evolution, or LTE, technology, to compete against AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, the company said this month.
Tuesday, August 09
By Brad
Competition in the next-generation mobile broadband market is heating up. With Verizon already deploying its LTE network nationwide, and AT&T pledging to expand its network to the majority of the country following its proposed merger with T-Mobile, provider Clearwire — partnering with Sprint — is gearing up to be one of the world’s first operators to launch what’s known as LTE TDD, or Long Term Evolution Time Division Duplex.
That’s certainly a complicated moniker, but thankfully Dan Jones at Light Reading has provided a handy explanation of what LTE TDD is, and what makes it exciting.
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