Cricket Communications and Clearwire announced a five-year wholesale agreement for access to Clearwire's forthcoming LTE Advanced-ready network. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Cricket currently plans to deploy LTE across approximately two-thirds of its current network footprint over the next two to three years and to cover up to approximately 25 million POPs with LTE network technology in 2012.
Cricket will become the second operator to have signed up for Clearwire's LTE wholesale network.
"This long-term partnership with Cricket is a key step forward in the development of Clearwire's wholesale LTE business model," said Erik Prusch, President and CEO of Clearwire. "Not all LTE networks are created equally. We have always believed that our unmatched spectrum portfolio offers a compelling resource that can and will enable wireless operators to thrive in the 4G marketplace of the future. We are very pleased to provide Cricket with additional mobile broadband resources to supplement their own LTE build and we plan to continue to actively seek new opportunities to serve the needs of other 4G providers."http://www.clearwire.com
- In December 2011, Sprint and Clearwire reached agreements valued at up to $1.6 billion over the next four years in payments for WiMAX services and wholesale LTE access.
