Sprint moving quickly to LTE – where’s Clearwire?
Friday, October 7th, 2011 Karen Ambrose Hickey, EditorSprint moves fast into LTE, but what about their Clearwire investment?
Today, on Gigaom.com, Sprint dials up LTE for its 4G future but leaves Clearwire hanging, by Ryan Kim discussed Sprint’s plans to agressively campaign and rollout their LTE/4G network in 2012. They will leverage old spectrum and soon cover 260 markets for 250 million people into 2013.
The LTE rollout will quickly overtake and pass the WiMax deployment by late next year. Which leaves the status of Clearwire as unclear. Looking towards 2015, Sprint will need more spectrum, but again, there’s no word on how Clearwire comes into play, although Sprint invested in them for a contract through 2012.
Clearwire has mentioned working with China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom company, as discussed in: Will a Clearwire-China Mobile Partnership Benefit Sprint? This should be a positive for Sprint, giving Clearwire another 4G partner and taking some of the financial burden off Sprint.
Tags: 4G network, carriers, LTE
