A report from the Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Clearwire has decided to abandon its dedicated retail sales strategy in order to focus on its network wholesale operations.
While the company will not close its current retail locations, it has decided not to continue its planned retail expansion in the wake of its current lack of capital, the remainder of which it is dedicating to the completion of its 4G WiMax network.
As the Clear branded retail locations were located around Sprint retail locations, majority partner Sprint also mounted objections to the retail strategy, as the carrier felt that two stores selling the same service was unnecessary and continually made requests to Clearwire to abandon the strategy in favor of cheaper alternatives.
In related news, T-Mobile and Clearwire are close to reaching a spectrum sale deal that would see both embattled companies benefitting each other, with T-Mobile purchasing some of Clearwire’s excess spectrum holdings for a future LTE network and Clearwire getting additional capital to continue operations after months of attempts to raise capital to continue operations.
