Clearwire Shareholders OK Sprint Xohm Merger

The Sprint Xohm-Clearwire Corp. merger took another step toward finalization today as Clearwire (CLWR).

shareholders gave the deal, expected to close by year’s end, the green light.

Clearwire and Sprint-Nextel Corp. (S) are combining their WiMAX efforts to form a new $14.5 billion company. The new company will be called Clearwire, and will take a $3.2 billion collective investment from Intel Corp., Google Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks. Sprint will own the largest stake, with an approximately 51 percent equity ownership; Clearwire shareholders will own around 27 percent and the new strategic investors, as a group, will acquire 22 percent.

The new Clearwire expects to offer mobile wireless Internet services on an array of new devices. Service will be made possible by integrated WiMAX chipsets, scalable operating expenses and a commitment to an open architecture.

Mobile WiMAX is a standards-based wireless broadband technology designed to operate multiple times faster than today’s 3G wireless networks. With embedded WiMAX chipsets in laptops, phones, PDAs, mobile Internet devices and consumer electronic equipment, mobile WiMAX technology is expected to allow users to wirelessly access multimedia applications, such as live videoconferencing, recorded video, games, large data files and more – anywhere in the network coverage area.

This version of 4G is expected within the next year in select metro markets.

Of course, this WiMAX-based vision is just one way industry players are attacking 4G. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless plan to move to 4G using a technology known as LTE. Verizon expects to do LTE trials this year and hopes to begin its commercial build in 2010. Most analysts say that LTE deployments will begin in earnest in 2011.

In an interview with xchange magazine earlier this year, Ben Wolff, CEO of the new Clearwire Corp., said of the Sprint Xohm-Clearwire deal: “WiMAX is well on its way and a significant factor in the 4G technology game, but to build a nationwide WiMAX network, the odds of a single company creating that footprint is much more remote. Neither of us had enough spectrum for that to deploy. The more we worked on a roaming agreement, the more complex it became. From a systems architecture perspective, it’s difficult to find a way to deliver consistent product and services nationwide. So we came to the conclusion that by combining resources and efforts, we’d end up with a more cohesive network across the U.S. than could have been created through roaming partnerships.”

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