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Sprint and Clearwire get their act together

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CIOL Bureau
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NEW YORK, USA: Sprint and Clearwire have reached an agreement that fills the void left from Sprint’s October announcement around its LTE plans and allows Clearwire to continue operating.

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Clearwire gets access to $1.6 billion in combined revenues and funding, including nearly $1 billion for WiMAX services in 2012 and 2013. The WiMAX network will operate through at least 2015, which is to be expected considering Sprint’s plans to sell smartphones with WiMAX until the end of 2012, says ABI Research.

Also Read: Sprint reduces voting rights in Clearwire

More importantly, the deal puts in place an agreement for Sprint to use Clearwire’s LTE TDD network, which will be much faster and higher capacity than Sprint’s own LTE network using its own spectrum, given Clearwire’s spectrum position and plans for its LTE network.

Learning from its past mistakes with Clearwire’s WiMAX buildout, Sprint’s $350 million prepayments for LTE capacity are contingent upon buildout quality and coverage goals to be met by June 2013, the researcher adds.

“Sprint and Clearwire have announced what amounts to their inevitable need to work together, so this announcement is no surprise,” says Philip Solis, research director, mobile networks. “Clearwire’s subscribers are mostly Sprint 4G customers and Sprint needs to access Clearwire’s vast spectrum. Sprint has been banging that spectrum drum for the last half decade, and now it can continue to do so.”

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