Might Sprint Wind Up Buying Spectrum From Clearwire it Already "Owns"?

It's hard to see how Clearwire and Sprint coexist harmoniously, forever, as difficult as it might be to imagine all the work and money it would take to simply have Sprint buy all of Clearwire.

A partial step, though, might entail Sprint winning a bid to buy excess spectrum Clearwire wants to sell, possibly as much as 40 MHz in most markets, which would give Sprint an ability to build its own Long Term Evolution network, using its own spectrum, with full management control over the process.

Some might argue spectrum ownership and full control is required for a company such as Sprint, which operates that way for the other of its networks. Whether Sprint had any better options than combining its original 4G spectrum with Clearwire is not clear. But it has gotten to be a somewhat rocky relationship, by virtually all reports.

It is an inherently difficult situation when a firm owns a clear majority of assets, but does not have management control. Though it has only a minority stake in Verizon Wireless, the relationship has been troublesome for Vodafone as well, one might note. Getting clear ownership and control of its own 4G spectrum would make life much easier for Sprint.

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