Sprint and Clearwire come to terms on WiMAX roaming

Sprint and Clearwire come to terms on WiMAX roaming

Clearwire Corp and Sprint Nextel Corp have made progress on terms for a roaming deal for their high-speed wireless networks based on WiMax technology, Clearwire's Chief Executive said on Wednesday. Clearwire Chief Executive Ben Wolff said the companies were also working on collaborating in other areas, but did not give details. He declined to comment on recent reports speculating that Sprint and Clearwire were looking to merge their WiMax assets with investments from outside companies.

Clearwire, a service provider founded by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, said that it ended the fourth quarter with 394,000 customers, including domestic and international markets, despite stiff competition from cable providers. Citing weakness in the U.S. economy, other Clearwire executives said that in the fourth quarter cable and telecom broadband Internet rivals competed more aggressively than ever on prices and network access speeds offered.

"We saw a fairly strong competitive reaction from the cable and DSL companies," said Wolff during a Webcast of the company's analyst meeting. He was referring to Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) Web services from telephone companies. Clearwire shares fell more than 12 percent to $13.47 on Nasdaq. The shares had risen more than 20 percent after the Tuesday report that a Sprint deal was being discussed.

Sprint, which has recently appointed a new chief executive in the hopes of stemming subscriber losses, had said in November that it was ditching a Clearwire agreement for roaming and other areas but that the companies kept talking.

They have now agreed on common network architecture in order to make it possible for their customers to roam between both networks, Wolff said. "We're making significant progress on the terms of a roaming agreement between the companies," he said.

Clearwire said fourth-quarter revenue was about $45 million. (Reporting by Sinead Carew, editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Gerald E. McCormick)