Clearwire Corporation (stylized as clearw˙re) was a telecommunications operator which provided mobile and fixed wireless broadband communications services to retail and wholesale customers in the United States, Belgium, Ireland and Spain.

Sprint Nextel was Clearwire's largest single shareholder, owning a 50.8% combined stake and control of the company.

[7] On July 9, 2013, Sprint Nextel completed acquiring the remaining shares it did not already own, becoming sole owner of Clearwire Corporation.

Sprint Corporation owned rights to radio frequency spectrum in the 2.5 GHz range which provides service primarily using the 4G 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard.

[1] Clearwire was ranked as the fifth largest wireless provider in the U.S., prior to being acquired, with roughly 11 million subscribers who used the WiMAX network as of January 2012.

Clearwire Technologies was formed by a number of investors including Sierra CEO Jim Gero and Edward "Rusty" Rose, a former co-managing partner of the Texas Rangers.

[9] After Goldman provided the funds—which were supposed to be used to roll out the system in key markets across the U.S.—they used a provision of the agreement to take control of the company; hiring a new CEO, Leo J. Cyr, who ousted the entire management team, including Clearwire CEO Brian Nerney, while diluting the strength of the founders still on the Board of Directors.

[citation needed] Clearwire took a $900 million infusion of capital from Intel and Motorola in July 2006, shortly after pulling its initial public offering.

[citation needed] Clearwire and Sprint Nextel announced a partnership in July 2007 to accelerate deployment of WiMAX technology across the US.

[16] In 2008, Sprint's new CEO Dan Hesse started serious discussions about forming a joint venture between the two companies in the hopes of bringing in outside funding from Google, Intel, and Best Buy.

[17] On March 26, 2008 an anonymous source stated that Sprint and Clearwire may get as much as $1 billion from Comcast and $500 million from Time Warner Cable in financial backing.

On March 9, 2009, Clearwire named Bill Morrow as CEO, succeeding Benjamin Wolff, who became co-chairman with Craig McCaw.

[30] On August 10, 2011, Clearwire promoted COO Erik Prusch to president and CEO, and named John Stanton executive chairman.

[34] On December 17, 2012, Sprint announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the remaining stake in Clearwire that it did not then own for $2.97 per share, which equaled $2.2 billion.

Several companies throughout the world use this same product line from Motorola, including Inukshuk Wireless Partnership of Canada, Beamspeed and Commspeed of Arizona, AccessTEL of Bangladesh, and Unitel of Guatemala.

[42] In the United States, Clearwire offered 4G fixed and mobile Internet access under the CLEAR brand in 88 cities.

Clearwire formerly offered Expedience-based services in Ireland and Denmark until operations in those countries were purchased by Imagine Communications and ERLO Group, respectively.

[46] Other Clearwire investors Comcast and Time Warner Cable resold Clearwire's 4G mobile broadband service in a number of markets, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Portland among others bundled with their cable, home phone, and residential Internet services.

[51][52] In the middle of 2012, Clearwire reached a settlement to provide partial refunds of termination fees and service credits for individuals who experienced throttling as part of their dynamic network management policy.

[53] In September 2013, Clearwire in Spain, operating under the brand Instanet, cut off all of its services, web and phone lines without prior notice.