The future of Wimax in the USA has been reinforced by a new cash injection of $1.56bn into the Wimax network builder and operator Clearwire.
Sprint, which owns 51% of Clearwire, will contribute $1.18bn. The rest of the $1.56bn will come from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Intel, Eagle River Holdings and Bright House Networks.
In return for the $1.56bn, the investors get shares priced at $7.33 each. In May 2008, a similar deal was done between the same parties at a price of $20 per share. In January 2009 Intel took a $950m impairment charge related to its investment in Clearwire because the Clearwire stock price had declined below $5.
In May 2008 the old Clearwire company and Sprint Nextel combined their Wimax broadband businesses into a new company, also named Clearwire, in which Intel (through Intel Capital), Google, Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House Networks collectively invested $3.2bn.
On completion of the 2008 deal, Sprint owned 51% of the new Clearwire company with approximately 51% equity ownership on the assumption of a price of $20 per share.
Existing old Clearwire shareholders owned approximately 27% of new Clearwire, and the Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks owned 22% of new Clearwire for their investment of $3.2bn.
At that time, the five companies announced they had entered into commercial wholesale agreements with Sprint/Clearwire
This week, Clearwire's CEO, Bill Morrow, said that, without the money, Clearwire could not meet its build-out objective of having a network a potential subscriber base of 120m by the end of 2010.
Clearwire's Wimax coverage in the USA can be seen from this company map.