Sprint & Clearwire Promise WiMax Will Be Totally Open, Can Replace Your ISP

Nina 06-13-2008

The massive WiMax joint venture expected to be announced today is official, though the rumored details were a bit off. Sprint's WiMax division is merging with Clearwire to form a single WiMax company called...Clearwire. (But Sprint will own most of it.) Happily, the clusterfuckiness factor is lower than we figured. Google, Intel, Time Warner and Comcast are all contributing in ways that actually seem helpful and logical. Here's what they're gonna do, besides chip in $3.2 billion, all told.

From the cable companies, you'll be seeing some quadruple play action, with them offering WiMax and 3G bundles with their services. For Intel's part, they'll be pushing WiMax in the Centrino 2 chipsets (as expected). And Google will be leading development of internet and advertising services, in addition to being Sprint's new default search on mobile phones. This whole thing is kind of amazing, actually : WiMax has gone from being a sure-fire also-ran to suddenly viable in a matter of weeks. Still a long road ahead, but they're in much better shape than it seemed even a week ago.

Raven

I know this is all good stuff but it seems way too early to make a big deal about this. I can't see this being available any time soon.

hugo281

yeah me either maybe sometime in the years to come it may be a possibility, I guess we'll just wait and see lol