The last year or so has seen an endless stream of rumors surrounding T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, and their desire to improve T-Mobile's fourth-place fortunes in the U.S. wireless market. Rumors recently suggested that Deutsche Telekom wanted to buy Sprint and merge the company with T-Mobile, despite some headache-inducing technical and network integration differences. While that rumor was largely debunked, one lingering rumor is that Deutsche Telekom would like to partner with Clearwire -- perhaps funding Clear deployment in exchange for access to spectrum.

That rumor became only a little more solid this week. Speaking at an investor conference in Frankfurt, CEO of T-Mobile USA Robert Dotson stated that the company had been talking with both Clearwire and cable companies about future business opportunities. "We continue to look at joint venture opportunities for additional spectrum... there are a number of different options we look at, (and) have been talking with cable companies, with Clearwire," says Dotson.

While a lot has been made about how Verizon and AT&T could easily overpower Clear with their as-yet-built LTE wireless broadband service (in large part because of their lobbying influence), Clearwire is certainly busy making a lot of friends to help in the fight. As for T-Mobile wanting to get together with Sprint? "What you never want to do is take one company that is going through challenges and take another company going through challenges," says Dotson.