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Have you Been Wondering why the Sprint and Clearwire Deal appealed to Comcast?
Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts offers up some interesting tidbits for why the deal made sense
A nice piece in Unstrung offers interesting feedback from Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts on why his firm took an investment position with the new Clearwire.
The answer to me in short is good old-fashioned deal making. Roberts indicates that the wholesale arrangement he got out of the play was pretty sweet. He was also impressed with the 150 MHz of spectrum that the new Clearwire will have in many markets. Also too the deal apparently includes roaming rights across all of the Sprint and Clearwire networks which was unique for them.
But it may have been his experience with the Portland, Oregon testbed that Clearwire is running with its soon to be expanded mobile broadband system that sealed the deal. Roberts is said to have been impressed with how seamlessly video downloaded at 50 miles per hour.
At the end of the day Comcast apparently saw this as the best opportunity out there for them. Is this going to be indicative of the type of deals that Dan Hesse can and will pull off for Sprint? If so, look for good things to come out of Sprint in the future because this was good old-fashioned win/win deal making at its best.
Tim Sanders
The Final Mile
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