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.