Amid the company's heavy capital expenditures for WiMAX, Sprint Nextel exercised its right to end its involvement with SpectrumCo, a wireless spectrum bidding consortium headed by cable MSOs Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks. SpectrumCo won 137 wireless licenses for $2.37 billion last October in the Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) auction [1]. Sprint never had a direct role in the consortium from the beginning. It held a 5-percent equity stake when the group was formed. Sprint [2] said it wanted to focus on its primary strategy with the cable companies, namely the Pivot cellular joint venture [3].
The most interesting piece of this is the fact that the consortium has yet to announce what it plans to use the AWS spectrum for.
For more about Sprint's drop out of SpectrumCo:
- read this article [4] from Unstrung
- read the latest news on Sprint here [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/aws-auction-ends-with-13-7b-raised/2006-09-19
[2] http://www.fiercewireless.com/tags/sprint
[3] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/comcast-ceo-on-killer-apps-for-pivot/2007-04-16
[4] http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=130586&site=cdn