Sprint Just Bought a Bunch of 4G LTE Spectrum by Acquiring Clearwire

Just a few days after it announced its sale to Softbank, Sprint has acquired Clearwire, reports DealBook's Michael J. De La Merced, which will help it grow its currently not very impressive LTE network. According to a regulatory filing, Sprint got itself a majority holding in the company, upping its shares from 48 perfcent to 50.8 percent, meaning it now controls the board, which handles some "valuable spectrum," in the words of De La Merced. Part of Sprint's LTE problem is not only that it just doesn't have capability in certain areas, as the sad map below shows (orange dots are markets with LTE), but it also doesn't have as much spectrum as its competitors in those markets. With Clearwires spectrum, however, Sprint can fix that, making its cell service much faster, which is a major goal of Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son. "U.S. citizens don’t have this experience of high speed," Son said in a conference call on Monday. "We’re going to bring that to the States." 

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