xenophon
join:2007-09-17
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| Affiliate like structure wouldn't work?
Not good overall but reading other tidbits about it, sounds like there were too many complexities to pull it off. But they will still target roaming on each other. The agreement would have made Clearwire more like a Sprint affiliate (like iPCS). It's back to becoming competing companies that roam on each other. Hopefully it will be as smooth as Alltel/Sprint EVDO roaming deal.
One lost opportunity is the swapping of spectrum, which had pluses and minuses. It would have given each over 100mhz spectrum in a market, but it would also mean giving up markets and dividing them between companies. That might have sounded good at a high level but sacrificing too much, especially for Sprint to give up entire markets to Clearwire. Sprint has 90mhz in most markets if I recall. I think Clearwire only has 20-30mhz in most.
Clearwire probably would have benefited more than Sprint, but Clearwire may not have wanted to be like an affiliate. Sprint only considered dividing the rollout with Clearwire to appease stockholders. Well the stockholders didn't buy into it anyway so they are moving along without needing that dependency.
An affiliate-like partnership would probably be better for end users, but maybe not good business in the end. They both know they still need each other for WiMAX to succeed. |
