You could almost feel
this one unraveling, but any remaining hope that Sprint and Clearwire would work something out has apparently been lost. Reportedly, the two have given up on trying to finalize an agreement to jointly build a nationwide WiMAX-based network, citing "complexities of the transaction and the
departure last month of Sprint Chief Executive Gary Forsee" as primary reasons for the plan's deterioration. 'Course, Sprint still has
a few options left, but it's fairly safe to say that what was
the most promising one is seemingly out of the picture, at least for now. Interestingly, it wasn't noted as to whether the two would hook back up and give this one more go in the future, but there were suggestions that a number of big timers (Intel, Nokia, Samsung, etc.) would possibly "inject financing into Clearwire to help keep its WiMAX project on track." And here we thought this was only the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
[Via
PhoneScoop]
posted Nov 9th 2007 8:02AM
:(!! thats bad news for sprints future
It's terrible news. I was really hoping that Sprint finally "got it" about the future of networking, but I can see that they're faltering. Is this the end of their WiMax plans in general?
I certainly hope this isn't the end of a US WiMax deployment. WiMax from Sprint/Clearwire would have put a lot of pressure on other service providers to step up their game.
Competition is good and it looks like we may have lost a competitor in the mobile broadband space :(
I was holding out and waiting to get a Nokia 810 w/ Wimax...
I hope someone else steps up to the plate.
I am an engineer with Sprint and can tell you that the WiMax build out has not stopped or slowed. The joint venture deal with Clearwire is the only thing that faded out. There are to many contracts in place with various equipment vendors (Nokia and Samsung most notably) to just scrap the entire project.
Here is a wild idea if you want to make Sprint customers happy
Completely unlock your network so we can put some good phones on the network e.g. eten, i-mate etc - they won't make anything CDMA because sprint's network is locked. The HTC crap we're stuck with sucks and will never work thanks to Sprints "help" with the firmware.
Fix your F'n customer service- usually takes about 4 calls - with many transfers to get to someone who recognizes their butt from crisco.
They have that already, you can activate any CDMA phone with sprint.
k thanks bye