[SporkLover]

Originally Posted by rorytmeadows

So basically Sprint just admitting to wasting company money investing in WiMax. If they need to make statements like that saying they can just upgrade the software (we'll see), then maybe they should have just invested in LTE in the first place. Especially since it's theoretically faster technology.

That's not Sprint. Thats Clearwire. When Clearwire began building it's Wimax network, LTE was a unicorn. It was a non-approved standard that wasn't commercially viable. WiMax was. WiMax had other actual deployments too.

The fact that Clearwire can switch, and has network flexibility, means they have positioned themselves well.

Sprint's investment in WiMax actually has less to do with a desire to roll out a 4g network than a desire to not lose valuable Spectrum. Sprint had a bunch of unused Spectrum that the FCC said they would take away from Sprint if they didn't use it. Sprint decided to utilize it with the deployment of a commercially ready 4G technology.