Sprint and Clearwire call off WiMAX JV

Sprint and Clearwire have called off their plans to jointly build a WiMAX network [1]nationwide, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal. The companies inked the deal for the joint venture in July, but they never finalized the deal within 60 days as planned. The report claimed the complexities of the deal and the recent departure of Sprint CEO Gary Forsee led to its ultimate demise.

Under the network build-out plan, Sprint Nextel was set to focus its efforts primarily on geographic areas covering approximately 185 million people, including 75 percent of the people located in the 50 largest markets, while Clearwire was set to focus on areas covering approximately 115 million people. Initially, the two companies expected to build out network coverage to approximately 100 million people by the end of 2008, with seamless roaming enabled between the deployed areas.

Neither company has indicated that it would abandon its individual plans to build out a WiMAX network, but the dissolution of this deal is certainly not good news for the WiMAX sector.

For more on Sprint and Clearwire's scrapped JV:
- check out this press release [2]
- read this report [3] from the WSJ (sub. req.)