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How Recession Helped Get A Sprint-Clearwire Deal Made

It's a truism that smart money finds places to invest during a downturn. Today's Sprint-Clearwire deal is a perfect illustration.

In the conference call discussing the Sprint Nextel-Clearwire partnership to build out a nationwide WiMax network, Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff (who will retain that title in the new entity) mentioned that the wireless broadband venture will help "bring down subsidies and prices for consumers."

That's a recipe for transformation for which the U.S. wireless market has been hungry for a long time. It's also an indication that, without the current vise-like state of the credit markets and the prospect (if not current reality of) a U.S. recession, this deal may not have gotten done.

Unlike Yahoo, which clearly overvalued itself in its now-collapsed talks with Microsoft about a takeover price, both Sprint and Clearwire realized that the only way to find access to capital to build out a nationwide network in today's environment was to a) reduce their bargaining position, and b) find partners on whom to lay off risk. In particular, Sprint -- whose bonds were recently downgraded by Standard & Poor's to junk status -- knew it had to find equity partners to move forward.

"One thing I've learned in creating a venture like this," Sprint VP of mobile broadband operations Atish Gude told me, "is that there are always two questions [from Wall Street]: the financial risks, and the risks of getting people to adopt the technology. We’ve been able to spread that risk effectively."

Both Gude and Intel VP Sriram Viswanathan, the chief WiMax executive at the chipmaker, which has now upped its investment in Clearwire by another $1 billion (the largest single investment ever by Intel's venture arm), answered in similar terms when I asked what had happened to finally get this deal done: The market conditions have changed significantly in recent months -- enough to force the parties to the table and keep them there until a deal was reached.

"Sprint Nextel has been exploring a variety of alternatives for its WiMax business, and Clearwire obviously has both feet in the water trying to deploy its network," remarks Viswanathan. "And both of them obviously had a need for capital, so given where the credit markets are, it became a sort of perfect storm in the positive sense."

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