Sprint and Clearwire edge closer to deal, world waits with bated breath

It seems that Sprint and Clearwire have been hooking up and breaking it off for nearly as long as Qualcomm and Nokia have been brawling, but just weeks after hearing that the two were on speaking terms once again, we're now learning that a deal may be closer than ever. Reportedly, both firms are "close to announcing the formation of a WiMAX joint venture funded in part by a $2 billion injection from Intel," and if the agreement is indeed landed within the next few days, it would "create a new company that combines Sprint's licenses in the 2.5GHz wireless spectrum and Clearwire's spectrum in the same and adjoining air waves." On paper, the deal seems to make sense for all parties involved, but at this point, we aren't about to assume that's enough to actually see this thing through.

[ethana2 @ Feb 19th 2008 2:47AM]

We have cleawire. They block torrent uploads. Ubuntu hardy alpha5 in 3 days is gonna take /forever/ to get..

I just want google to buy clearwire and copowi ;)

[JaggedXJ @ Feb 20th 2008 2:59AM]

In NC at least there has been less BT interference lately on ClearWire. When I was home for the summer I definitely had BT throttled down to ~1k, useless. When I was home for winter break however, there was a lot less obvious or no throttling. I had the impression it had to do with the Comcast court action and "undoing" their system before similar action could be taken against them. I still think it is a generally crappy service with a rather large house only getting a useful signal at a certain angle on one shelf of one bookcase in the whole house. (opposite side from the tower we get service from, go figure) We even drove to the base of the tower we get service from using Google earth to find it and a UPS to power the modem and didn't have full "bars". It isn't a "put it where it is convenient and out of sight" service. I believe once our contract is up we will be switching to a different service, unless Sprint can better leverage the tech; i.e. speed, signal strength, and maybe even price. (Yeah right)

[TigerShark @ Feb 19th 2008 3:14AM]

Now a 4G iPhone would look great on Sprint, 3G????? Come on Apple, 3G was so last year, 4G is the real deal. While ATT are gearing up for 3G, Sprint is almost ready with 4G.

[Jeff Lewis @ Feb 19th 2008 4:53AM]

Uh..

Hi there.

We've already had WiMAX up here in Canada for a couple of years now. Korea's had it for years (WiBRO).

I can assure you - the entire world is not hanging on whether or not two American companies get together and play nice so that US can finally catch up with the rest of the world.

Now... if you guys could play nice and switch to DVB-T and GSM and stop screwing around with non-standard systems... THAT would be a news-worthy moment.

[sitruc @ Feb 19th 2008 12:54PM]

You do realize the headline was basically just hyperbole, right? Most of this is an American-centric site. They're even a part of AOL. Also, you may want to do a little more research so you have a better understanding of what is a standard and what people in the US use. GSM is used in the US. There are CDMA and other networks as well(much of the world still uses CDMA vairants). Why have every provider switch to GSM when there are new formats coming soon? Oh...and Canada uses ATSC.

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Feb 19th 2008 4:00PM]

to tell you the truth, I'm waiting with tomato sauce breath, but whatever you say