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A Sprint Clearwire Deal is Rumored to be Very Close
Early reports indicate that Sprint and Clearwire could announce a WiMAX deal as early as Wednesday of this week.
I had read reports that the deal was struggling
over who would control the company. And I assumed it was between Sprint and
Clearwire in terms of control, but it appears from a report in
Fortune's Techland section that Google may have been the holdup. It
appears that, for whatever reason, Google has struggled to decide whether to
lend its name to the deal backing out and then recently coming back in. For
their part the carriers would certainly want to enjoy the coattails of Google's
name attached to the project.
Is this a big deal? Heck yeah it is---if it gets done. So what are the details?
Well, at this point we don't have much. But it appears the deal would include
Comcast and Tim Warner Cable as well as Intel (for funding) and Google (also for
funding and name recognition).
I think the Google component is really large even though for it choosing a
platform and participation in a wireless venture could close some doors for them
with other carriers as they would effectively become a de-factor competitor.
Still, Google's market value is super strong even in this economy and I would
look for that to not significantly affect their deal making abilities with other
carriers. After all we are talking about (one supposes) only an investment
position here.
Will this happen? Who knows at this point, but some answers might be forthcoming
tomorrow.
Tim Sanders
The Final Mile
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