Sprint and Clearwire in Dispute Over WiMax Smartphone Revenue

Following up, Sprint and Clearwire are undergoing arbitration in order to resolve a dispute regarding revenue paid to Clearwire for 4G access. At issue is the claim by Clearwire that it should be paid by Sprint for every customer with a WiMax/CDMA hybrid device regardless of coverage availability, while Sprint disagrees with Clearwire’s interpretation of the revenue sharing agreement and will only pay Clearwire the agreed revenue share (revealed to be $4.46 per customer) so long as the devices are activated in a WiMax coverage area.

The arbitration also revealed that Clearwire is claiming 810,000 customers under the current agreement as a source of revenue with the arbitration filing being filed late last month on the 29th.  Should the arbitration fall to Sprint’s favor, the beleaguered ISP faces even less revenue earned while struggling to find the funding to continue operations with the ISP recently taking steps to conserve capital.