Two months ago at the Intel Developer Forum Sprint and Clearwire seemed like such a happy couple, gazing intently into each other's eyes, enthusiastically talking about their plans to bring WiMax to a projected 150 million people in 2008. Looks can be deceiving, I guess.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reports that the two companies will part ways due to "complexities" in the partnership and the departure last month of Sprint's CEO Gary Forsee -- a longtime champion of WiMax for the company.
While Sprint is having considerable difficulties holding onto its own customers these days, the WSJ actually casts the dissolved partnership as potentially more detrimental to Clearwire -- a much smaller company that has basically staked its entire future on WiMax.
Nevertheless, there are no indications that either company will halt build-out plans at this point. Sprint has said it will spend about $5 billion on the network through 2010, and with a slowdown affecting more than just the two companies, sources even tell the Journal that Clearwire may actually end up being the beneficiary of some rather generous financing from companies like Intel, Motorola and Samsung, all of whom are planning to release WiMax products next year.
[Via WSJ]
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