Some hard times are coming for Clearwire Corporation. Google has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to shed their 6.5 percent stake in the 4G wireless providers corporation. Clearwater’s major investment in WiMaxx was supposed to cement them as a premier wireless broadband provider, but it just simply didn’t happen.
Now Google is willing to sell the stake they purchased for $500 million, at a hugely discounted rate of $47 million. The SEC reports that Google is attempting to rebalance their portfolio, but anyone can see that they are merely hoping to cut loose a sinking ship. No doubt this will be a devastating blow to Clearwire.
Clearwire has been having great difficulty staying above water in recent years, and posted losses of nearly $2 billion. This came at the expense of shareholders and Sprint, a major Clearwater investor, actually had to take measures to bailout the troubled technology corporation.
Sprint commented on their financial backing of Clearwire:
“The companies have agreed to collaborate on a network build plan and will jointly select LTE macro-cell sites to cover Sprint’s high usage area ‘hotspots.'”
“The agreements also establish long-term usage-based pricing for LTE services for 2012 and beyond,”
So while Google chose to get out while the getting is good, Sprint takes a different path and banks on Clearwire coming out of this setback a success. Hopefully this decision won’t come back to haunt Sprint.
