Sprint to take control of Clearwire

[WiWavelength]

Sprint is acquiring Craig McCaw's 4.5 percent stake in Clearwire.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/sprint-said-to-buy-eagle-river-s-clearwire-stake-to-gain-control.html

 

AJ

[Bob Newhart]

I hate that WSJ makes you pay to view their articles....... and it still has ads

 

That is how printed newspapers are and how cable tv is, and why they're both dieing.

 

I do hope that this sprint-clear control buyout won't cause Sprint to go belly up.

[Rawvega]

 

 

I do hope that this sprint-clear control buyout won't cause Sprint to go belly up.

 

How do you see that possibility occurring?

[Tomas]

Sprint is acquiring Craig McCaw's 4.5 percent stake in Clearwire.

 

http://www.bloomberg...in-control.html

 

AJ

Having dealt with Craig, I feel this is good for Clearwire...

[marioc21]

I hate that WSJ makes you pay to view their articles....... and it still has ads

 

True, but if you only read occasional articles you can get around it. If you search for the article headline in google you will get link to the full article. There's probably a limit to the number of articles you can read from a given computer, but I've yet to hit it.

[marioc21]

How do you see that possibility occurring?

 

The reason that Sprint originally reduced it's stake in clearwire below 50% was that it didn't want to be responsible for Clearwire's debt load. They had their own to worry about and didn't want to get saddled with billions more. I guess that's not a big concern anymore, but it you never know.

[bigsnake49]

This is just the beginning of the opposition to Sprint's spectrum position. I think they wont be allowed to easily acquire any other companies and acquiring H will be harder because ATT is butthurt about it's own spectrum position. I bet that Verizon doesn't say much though. The analysts that used to hate Sprint will start bashing their new powerful position like Entner at the end of this article.

 

http://www.fiercewir...ouse/2012-10-16

 

Entner is such an AT&T shill, it's not even funny.

[bigsnake49]

I like the fact that Sprint will get control of Clearwire and bring them back under their umbrella. It will reduce overhead once they integrate their networks and consolidate them. I do think that DirectTV and Dish should both get in bed with Clearwire/Sprint and take advantage of their prodigious amount of spectrum to do Video-on-Demand over their network. Actually, they could use the outdoor antenna mounts to offer fixed broadband as well. Sprint can host Dish's spectrum, thus minimizing Dish's network outlay. So there's a lot of synergies that can be realized with the satellite cos. I hope that Sprint vigorously pursues these opportunities.

[JeffDTD]

With Sprint having full control or not, nothing here disproves that clear's goal may be to continue to sell wholesale access to LTE. Its baffling to me that Clear hasn't thus far been able to get more wholesale clients. I wouldn't doubt the fact that Clear success benefits Sprint has thus far kept the big players away from it, but when you consider how many clients Lightsquared was able to sign up in a short period of time, I think the saving grace in these holdings for Sprint is to continue to fashion the company (regardless of how Sprint uses it for its own customers) as a wholesale LTE messiah. Where was ATT's WCS spectrum aspirations when Clear was out there looking for wholesale clients? Oh, thats right... ATT doesn't spend money on anything that has the possibility of ever benefiting anyone else and would rather be on a spectrum island than have to share.

 

Its really childish for Sprint's enemies to throw their emotions around when Sprint finally finds the cash to take advantage of their assets.

 

And in the event of a complete buyout of Clear, who's to say that Sprint won't offer to divest some of that spectrum to another company or back to the government to hold and resell? Sprint clearly doesn't need ALL of Clear's spectrum to accomplish its own personal goals.

[marioc21]

So if I'm readin the SEC filings right, and they're not the clearest things in the world to read, Sprint paid roughtly $100 million for 5% economic interest and 2.3% control interest to Eagle River. That gives sprint a 55% economic interest in CLWR and 50.4% controlling interest. Lots cheaper than buying the Company outright.

 

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/101830/000119312512426578/d424777dsc13da.htm

 

Interesting that SoftBank's lenders were requiring that control of Clearwire be part of this deal.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444868204578063151759878238.html

 

From WSJ:

Softbank agreed to buy a 70% stake in Sprint in a deal announced on Monday. As a condition of the $20 billion in financing required for the deal, Softbank's lenders sought assurances that Sprint would be able to control Clearwire, people familiar with the matter said.

[ericdabbs]

I agree with you, except I don't see them deploying LTE on Cellular or AWS in any significant capacity in the short term. AWS just doesn't make sense as they gave it all to T-Mobile. I see it more as a bargaining chip for more spectrum in other areas. Cellular, I see them using as their primary voice platform. It must be able to serve the areas that 2g voice serves today. We have noted that VoLTE might not be able to do that. Those are minor details. however. You are right. AT&T holds a lot of prime spectrum and is having a tough time migrating to 3g/4g technologies. The FCC should not adjust their spectrum positions just because some technologies are harder to migrate from than others.

 

I agree that AT&T won't be deploying LTE on Cellular frequency band but that doesn't mean they don't have the ability or intention to not do it eventually. Same with Verizon. The way I look at things is whether a wireless carrier has the capability and the intention to eventually deploy LTE and both AT&T and Verizon do plan to deploy LTE on all spectrum bands eventually. Both companies have more than enough of their share of overall spectrum as well as the dominance of < 1 GHz spectrum. They have no right to complain. Just because AT&T is stuck with using the Cellular band for voice and 2G technologies is not an excuse to be able to acquire more spectrum. AT&T has made strides to be able to use 20 MHz of WCS spectrum for LTE which is enough for a 10x10 LTE carrier. It is AT&T's fault for not trying to push people into 3G and 4G technologies sooner and they should have to deal with the consequences. If that were the case then Sprint can easily argue that hey we are taking control of Clearwire's board but we don't plan to deploy all 150 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in the near future so it should not be a threat to AT&T.

 

Sprint made a firm stance to shut down iDEN by June 2013 despite a ton of folks in construction that rely on Nextel Direct Connect and decided that the 800 MHz spectrum would make better use for CDMA and LTE.

[Ryan]

ok, maybe you guys can explain this to me. Sprint take control of Clearwire and the stock plummets??? Why? That would be a good things right? Or am i wrong?

[bigsnake49]

ok, maybe you guys can explain this to me. Sprint take control of Clearwire and the stock plummets??? Why? That would be a good things right? Or am i wrong?

 

People (speculators) were expecting that Clearwire was going to buy them out, not just up their stake.

[bigsnake49]

With Sprint having full control or not, nothing here disproves that clear's goal may be to continue to sell wholesale access to LTE. Its baffling to me that Clear hasn't thus far been able to get more wholesale clients. I wouldn't doubt the fact that Clear success benefits Sprint has thus far kept the big players away from it, but when you consider how many clients Lightsquared was able to sign up in a short period of time, I think the saving grace in these holdings for Sprint is to continue to fashion the company (regardless of how Sprint uses it for its own customers) as a wholesale LTE messiah. Where was ATT's WCS spectrum aspirations when Clear was out there looking for wholesale clients? Oh, thats right... ATT doesn't spend money on anything that has the possibility of ever benefiting anyone else and would rather be on a spectrum island than have to share.

 

Its really childish for Sprint's enemies to throw their emotions around when Sprint finally finds the cash to take advantage of their assets.

 

And in the event of a complete buyout of Clear, who's to say that Sprint won't offer to divest some of that spectrum to another company or back to the government to hold and resell? Sprint clearly doesn't need ALL of Clear's spectrum to accomplish its own personal goals.

 

I think that with Sprint having full voting control of the board, they can make sure that Clearwire's goals are aligned with Sprint's. They can share networks thereby minimizing expenses and being able to handoff to each other. Clearwire can still wholesale capacity, but it will have to do that in cooperation with Sprint and only if it makes economic sense.

[doomstang]

Here's an article on it.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/18/sprint-nextel-takes-control-of-clearwire-after-increasing-stake/

[JeffDTD]

Its funny to me that ATT can say out of one side of its mouth that softbanks actions with sprint is proof of a competitive wireless environment and then out of the other side of its mouth, voice concern over softbank having access to clears spectrum .

 

They are literally terrified of competition. What, would they have us believe softbank is gonna build a fantastic mobile broadband network and make it more expensive than att's offerings? Please. Theyre terrified of competition driving down their preciously priced tiered data. ATT (especially mr. Stephenson) wets his knickers everytime he dreams about a future filled with singularly priced gigabytes being gulped down by 100s of millions of data junkies with no other option.

[mc_gusto]

 

Call it Spank or Spankwire. Just do not call it SpankBank. That means something totally different.

 

 

AJ

 

I guess you haven't Googled spankwire yet. :-)

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

[supert0nes]

Any chance that the ordering of spectrum priority changes through all of this? 2.5->1900->800. Many of us were thinking Sprint wouldn't want to pay Clearwire so the priority would be on Sprint frequencies first.

[pii100]

I guess you haven't Googled spankwire yet. :-)

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

Im pretty sure its not something this new conglomeration would want to be associated with. Spankwire, spankbank = same thing.

[ericdabbs]

Any chance that the ordering of spectrum priority changes through all of this? 2.5->1900->800. Many of us were thinking Sprint wouldn't want to pay Clearwire so the priority would be on Sprint frequencies first.

 

I really want the spectrum priority to be 2500->1900->800. I don't think that by Sprint simply controlling the Clearwire board that they can amend a contract that was agreed upon by both parties back in Nov.

 

However with a complete buyout of Clearwire then of course the current deal is off the table and Sprint can prioritize their spectrum as needed for their network while honoring the current contracts for tonnage for the other wholesale providers that Clearwire has signed for LTE access.

[RichardXy]

I am just curious to know if Sprint will start hosting Clear spectrum in areas like San Diego that never received a full wimax deployment. Do you think they will add antennas or other radio equipment that can host that spectrum as they roll out network vision?

[Dkoellerwx]

It has been part of the plan to add more coverage in densely populated areas via Clear's new LTE network. There will be no expansion on the WiMax network.

[xcharles718]

What exactly was preventing Sprint from having Clearwire deploying on the NV platform? They had economic and voting control before, why didn't they push for it then?

 

As in regards of why Clearwire didn't pick up as many wholesale subscribers as LS'd, their strategies and and spectrum were different. Unlike LightSquared's planned coverage area of what would essentially be an complete NV-overlay(excluding satellite phone service), Clearwire's deployment plan is for hot spot zones only. Thus, an MVNO isn't viable using Clearwire's network alone.

[iansltx]

What exactly was preventing Sprint from having Clearwire deploying on the NV platform? They had economic and voting control before, why didn't they push for it then?

 

As in regards of why Clearwire didn't pick up as many wholesale subscribers as LS'd, their strategies and and spectrum were different. Unlike LightSquared's planned coverage area of what would essentially be an complete NV-overlay(excluding satellite phone service), Clearwire's deployment plan is for hot spot zones only. Thus, an MVNO isn't viable using Clearwire's network alone.

 

This, compounded with LS's spectrum portfolio, which if I recall correctly was around 35 MHz FD in ~1500 MHz. So you can do LTE with PCS voice/EvDO spacing and everything just works. Well, except for the whole GPS deal.

 

As for why Sprint didn't do NV with Clearwire in mind, they were trying to work with LS, and Clearwire was yet another moving piece in the puzzle. Now that LS is off the table, they can concentrate on CLWR. The flip side of this is that, for a mobility-focused network, you don't want, nor do you need, Clearwire TD-LTE on every site. In a metropolitan area you want to go after clusters of close-together sites where heavy capacity is needed. Suburban/rural sites? Heck, they may or may not get SMR LTE, let alone 2500, due to the added expense of putting panels/line cards up.

 

The situation changes when you have a sugar daddy (SB) that wants economies of scale on TD-LTE 2500 equipment. Your marginal cost per site goes down, and your political incentives to roll out the network go up. So you put TD-LTE 2500 on more sites than you otherwise would have, partially by making sure that Clearwire will adopt whatever deployment strategy you want them to have. As an added benefit, you don't have capacity problems...pretty much ever...on the sites where you've got PCS+2500+SMR LTE, since you can stack TD carriers to your heart's content and go to 60-degree sectors without too much of an issue (2.4GHz panels are quite reasonably sized, and, I imagine, so are 2.5).

[xenadu]

Hah looks like we were right about Clearwire!

 

This FCC administration seems to be willing to look at spectrum aggregation not as an absolute but as a sum of parts of unequal value. In other words, VZW and AT&T may not be allowed to gobble up nearly all below 1 GHz spectrum, then claim inequity because Sprint-uh-Bank-Crearwire has ~150 MHz of 2.6 GHz spectrum.

 

If I were the Spectrum Czar that the FCC should have, I would value spectrum according to this formula:

 

[1000 × bandwidth (GHz)] ÷ [center frequency (GHz)]²

 

The higher the value, the greater the spectrum applies to the cap...

 

AJ

 

You posted exactly what I was going to post.

 

Any chance that the ordering of spectrum priority changes through all of this? 2.5->1900->800. Many of us were thinking Sprint wouldn't want to pay Clearwire so the priority would be on Sprint frequencies first.

 

Here is my theory: they aren't buying Clear outright because then that spectrum definitely applies against them in future auctions/mergers, but they need control to prevent anyone else from buying Clear. The goal is to keep them at army's length while they go after MetroPCS, Tmobile, or whoever else... Then bring Clear in-house once those more valuable spectrum deals are done.

 

I wouldn't be surprised to see Clear sign a hosting deal with Sprint though, to allow them to roll out LTE on 2.6Ghz much faster while still keeping them at arm's length.

 

 

I'm sure Sprint would love more spectrum in the SMR band but that isn't gonna happen (I always thought they should offer cut-rate service to all existing public safety users in exchange for getting another chunk of SMR... Basically take over the building of a nationwide public safety network, but that depends on the cost).

 

They need some more PCS spectrum which a MetroPCS or Tmobile deal would get them... If they buy the Dish spectrum that juts right up against the PCS H block so that's a natural fit and nationwide too.

 

The Clear spectrum is entirely about dense city areas where you don't need the signal to travel far or even to have 100% coverage... You just need to offload enough users to keep average data speeds on your better spectrum high. And deploying a bunch of 20Mhz carriers in the Clear bands does that for you... Plus it's much more likely you can maintain service during large events.