Finally, Sprint and Clearwire have merged. This deal has been a long time in the making, and looked like it wouldn’t happen at various points. But now it has cleared, and it has closed. It was aided by a big investment from Google, Intel, and Comcast, to the tune of $3.2 billion. Clearly, these entities have an interest in building out broadband wireless networks.
This has implications beyond wireless Internet. Sprint is in on it, and they’re trying to close the gap between themselves and AT&T and Verizon, the nation’s two largest wireless providers. They both plan to migrate to LTE for their fourth-generation networks. Sprint thinks it can use WiMAX to its advantage and leverage it as a wireless Internet service as well as the next generation cellular technology.
We could see Clearwire’s implementation as soon as next year. The company claims that they’ll be up and running in Portland, Oregon sometime in the first quarter. Further roll outs could follow shortly.
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