Hesse: Sprint still talking to Clearwire about tie-up

During the company's dismal fourth-quarter earnings call on Friday, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said some sort of partnership with Clearwire may still come to fruition.

"We have had wide ranging discussions with Clearwire on potential relationships but no final agreements have been reached," Hesse said during the call.

Although Hesse said he'd talk more about Sprint's WiMAX plans at a later date, he did say the company's soft launches at the end of last year in Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Chicago offered "confidence in the performance of the technology." He also noted that while Sprint's core business is management's top priority, Sprint has an "enormous asset--nearly 100 MHz of un-utilized spectrum--and the opportunity to have a three-year head start with our Xohm service, true wireless broadband with multi-megabit speed." He also said the company later this year plans to introduce dual-mode CDMA/WiMAX devices.

For more about Hesse's WiMAX comments:
- read the company's fourth-quarter transcript [1] on Seeking Alpha

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