As expected, Clearwire and Sprint have announced that they’ve merged to become a $14.55 billion wireless comms company. The newly formed company will be called Clearwire with Sprint Nextel having a 51 percent stake while Clearwire will control 27 percent. Another 22 percent goes to Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in return for their $3.2 billion investment. Clearwire hopes for a US WiMAX deployment of 120 million to 140 million people by 2010.
The boards of all companies have signed off on this deal and should be sealed in Q4. Clearwire’s current CEO Benjamin Wolff will continue to lead the pack while Sprint’s CTO Barry West will serve as president.