Reports are indicating that Sprint will finally buy out the remaining 49-percent of Clearwire that it doesn't already own. Sprint finally took a controlling stake in Clearwire back in October, which gave the number 3 carrier in the U.S. some more options when it came to deploying its LTE network. Buying the rest of Clearwire would once and for all end the uneasy partnership between the companies, letting Sprint have its way with all of the spectrum holdings Clearwire has.
At its current stock price, Clearwire is worth about $1.8 billion. That's not quite the whole story though, as Clearwire isn't a profitable business at this point and carries lots of debt. The rest of the buyout is now possible regardless, with a large inflow of cash coming as part of Softbank's controlling investment in Sprint, which will bring about $8 billion to spend. Those issues aside, Sprint is in deep enough at this point that it needs to just finish out the deal and own Clearwire completely.
Source: WSJ
