After passively taking Sprint's abuse for weeks, Clearwire's CEO lashed back today in an interview reported in the Wall Street Journal. Clearwire needs a new contract with Sprint to support the financing it needs to build out its 4G LTE networkas rapidly as it can in 2012. AT&T and Verizon are moving forward with their 4G networks and speed is of the essence if Sprint wishes to remain relevant in the next wave of upgrades. Armed with a new Sprint contract, Clearwire can also obtain vendor financing for some of that network rebuild. At recent analyst meetings, Clearwire has been afraid to be too bullish that it would successfully resolve its differences with its parent Sprint because of Sprint's recent behavior. That pertains even though Sprint's Chairman stepped into the breach after Dan Hesse, CEO made quite a public hash of the relationship between the two companies at its analyst meeting on October 7th. Hesse has also made public references to Sprint and the movie Moneyball which seem to have little common ground for comparison.
|