An alliance as
potentially consuming and unwieldy as Clearwire Corp.'s $14.5 billion WiMax venture with Sprint Nextel Corp. is bound to have implications for the companies' existing partners, right? That's what analysts wondered when DirecTV Inc. announced its first-quarter earnings on May 7, just hours after the Clearwire-Sprint WiMax deal made headlines.
DirecTV has an existing alliance with Clearwire,
announced in June 2007, that was supposed to allow the satellite operator to deliver a triple-play video, voice and data product to customers in Clearwire's network coverage area.
While DirecTV surpassed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter -- increasing subscriptions by 5.3% and posting revenue of $4.59 billion, up 17% -- analysts still wanted to know what Clearwire's WiMax alliance would mean for DirecTV.
DirecTV chief executive Chase Carey downplayed the impact, saying Clearwire "had not been a meaningful part of anything we've been doing, We have an agreement, but we're not doing a whole lot with it, and
they haven't been doing a whole lot with the business."
That may be true, but as this
article from Multichannel News makes clear, Clearwire's WiMax partners include DirecTV rivals Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks. And in the brutally competitive telecom market, aligning yourself with the right partners can be a huge factor in capturing market share.
- Suzanne Stevens
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