Sprint & Clearwire Form $14.5 Billion WiMAX Venture
Last Wednesday, Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) president and CEO Dan Hesse announced the company's collaborative plan with Clearwire (CLWR) to build a wireless high-speed Internet network based on the emerging WiMAX technology with initial investments of $14.5 Billion.
Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc, Intel Corp, Google Inc. and cable operator Bright House Networks are expected to kick in $3.2 billion to help finance the venture. The deal will provide much needed funding for Sprint and Clearwire and will allow cable providers to offer wireless services and compete more effectively with rivals AT&T and Verizon Communications.
As of late, AT&T and Verizon have been chipping away at cable companies’ market share by offering affordable and convenient television, Internet, phone and wireless service bundles. WiMAX is a new technology with tremendous promise that is capable of providing broadband connection to wireless devi
ces anywhere.Intel Corp. has been an enormous proponent of WiMAX for years. The company sees the new technology as a catalyst to future growth and has already begun imbedding WiMAX chips in Centrino-based laptops and other mobile devices. Looking into the future, Intel foresees just about every electronic device having a WiMAX chip, from digital cameras to game consoles.
Already, there are flash memory cards for cameras that have Wi-Fi capabilities built in so that the user can upload pictures to a web site or social network without ever connecting to a computer.
check it out: http://www.eye.fi/
The implications on the businesses of leading chip manufacturers will be extremely positive If SprintNextel and Clearwire can make good on their plans to deploy the network throughout the country's top 100 cities, reaching between 120M and 140M subscribers by the end of 2010. Therefore, Intel - the worlds largest chip manufacturer - believes that investing in this new age technology will only benefit their chip sales over the upcoming years. The company is shelling out a reported $1B for the Clearwire venture.
With the potential to help the world access the web from virtually anywhere, we strongly feel that WIMAX and the Clearwire venture could soon drive the next wave in telecommunications industry progression. SprintNextel better hope so. The company recently reported a first quarter loss of $505M or $.18 per share versus $211M or $.07 per share during Q1 '07.
Intel Corp. Press Release:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080507corp_a.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20080507ra
WiMAX Homepage:
http://www.wimaxforum.org/home/
Labels: Clearwire, Intel Corp, Sprint Nextel, WiMAX
posted by "Staff" at
12:16 PM
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