Comments on: Here’s why Sprint offered $2.1B to buy the rest of Clearwire

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 02:47:11 +0000

The 2.6 MHz spectrum that Clearwire has is ideal for small cells and a perfect complement to Sprint’s current holdings. With the acquisition, Sprint will have more than *three times the spectrum* that AT&T and Verizon have in many markets, not “a third” as the article says.

By: Luscious

Luscious — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 21:33:10 +0000

This isn’t news to those who have been following Clear/Sprint. The real question (and the one that still hasn’t been addressed) is what will happen to existing Clear customers with WiMax equipment? I wrote about this in my review of their mobile hotspot way back in February:

http://lgponthemove.blogspot.com/2012/02/accessory-corner-clear-apollo-4g-mobile.html

By: marcomstudio

marcomstudio — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:41:51 +0000

Sprint has always been the bastard child behind the other big two. Even when it was Ma Bell and then MCI and Worldcom, Sprint never got it until it was too late. If Bernie hadn’t been so stupid, Sprint wouldn’t even exist today. Yeah, they’re big, but there also always strapped for cash and thus have to settle for the crumbs. Which is exactly what Clearwire is. Spectrum is finite, so it’s really the only thing worth taking from Clear. Maybe Sprint will get some of the Clear customers, but I wouldn’t count on it due to the fact they cannot compete with AT&T and definitely not Verizon when it comes to sales and marketing. Spring will always be the want-to-be loner and will never be invited to the grown up table. Just like Chrysler when they compromised to sell the inferior K-Car instead of fixing their quality problems, Spring will always be the one who is late to the dance and forgot to bring a date.

By: TinMan

TinMan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:18:58 +0000

Didn’t we just for through these blue-sky promises from Sprint with 4G WiMax back in ’08? What a disaster that turned out to be from a customer perspective. After waiting a year to get the service installed in our markets 4g WiMax turned out to be virtually useless because it only worked outdoors and marginally in-vehical and not at all in buildings as it had zero penetration capability. Signal propagation was so poor that service was spotty. Then the battery drain 4G WiMax posed. OMG! It was so bad you’d deplete your battery in less than an hour. Now we are being asked to purchase devices that won’t be capable of 4G speeds for over a year despite being asked to continue to pay full-tilt monthly, let alone the dilemma of the device being obsolete by the time network service catches up to device capability. Sprint service costs less for a reason. You get what you pay for and in our case it was a lot of empty promise.

By: John Nemesh

John Nemesh — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:06:01 +0000

Sprint is quickly adapting their strategy…they are late to LTE, but have been VERY aggressive with their plans to modernize the ENTIRE network, addressing their backhaul issues and modernizing their 3G network at the same time as they are deploying LTE. In addition, because they are doing a much more comprehensive upgrade than AT&T or Verizon, they will be the first company able to provide LTE-Advanced! They may be lagging the competition now, but I can see them having a VERY robust, competitive network in just a few years. Yes, that is a long wait for current subscribers, but I am willing to wait it out as I don’t feel like being charged by the megabyte on Verizon or AT&T!

By: BrianB

BrianB — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:59:44 +0000

Clearwire was never going to be able to afford building out a competitive LTE network against VZ and ATT. This purchase sets the stage for Sprint to be more competitive in the next business cycle for mobile technology, which I believe is going to be driven by low cost ubiquitous high bandwidth unlimited data for all mobile devices.

The best thing ATT/VZ could do now to prevent a stronger Sprint from emerging is crashing the Sprint/Clearwire party by making a bidding war for Clearwire and drive up the price of Clearwire. Clearwire is an independent company (majority owned by Sprint), the minority shareholders would be eager to get the best price and Clearwire’s board has to maximize ALL shareholder value, not just Sprint’s.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:53:00 +0000

I agree Sprint has a lot of expensive network re-architecting to do to modernize the Clearwire network, but this should work well with Sprint’s Network Vision initiative. Once complete, Sprint’s LTE-Advance network would combine 2.6GHz/1.9GHz/800MHz networks to make a network that has good building penetration (800MHz/1.9GHz), has good rural coverage (800MHz), and has tremendous urban bandwidth (1.9GHz/2.6GHz). If Dish Network jumps on board, 2.0GHz would be in the mix too. Sprint would need every dollar Softbank will provide to complete this network overhaul.

By: JJ

JJ — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:36:08 +0000

Sprint may offer unlimited,…but unlimited of faulty service is no good deal. I just moved 5 phones from Sprint to Verizon after being with Sprint for over 14 years. Their latest 4G debacle of making us wait for a year or more until the new 4G LTE phones they now sell even become functional on their network was close to the last straw. Then I moved to a home where all cell service is challenged so I began using the Sprint Airave femtocell inside my home. 3 Airave devices later, Sprint is still not able to engineer the Airave service to not randomly disconnect calls. Upon going to Verizon I purchased their network extender femtocell for my home. Verizon service has been strong, clear and generally awesome everywhere.

By: Madlyb

Madlyb — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:28:06 +0000

Yeah, as a Sprint subsciber and early adopter of their WiMax phones, I can tell you they will need to completely rearchitect that network to make it truly viable.

As you mentioned in the article, Clearwire’s spectrum just doesn’t carry through houses and even trees very well. I have 3 bars at the back of our property, but it drops to nothing within the house which is 60 feet away due to a thick grove of trees, the house structure, and I am guessing, interference from my local Wireless network which sits on adjacent spectrum.

There aren’t a lot of options for spectrum, but the higher density of towers required to properly carry this spectrum may make it a poor choice.