It was just two months ago that Clearwire inked a deal to receive up to to $1.6 billion in financing from its partner Sprint.
That’s a lot of coin, but it is not quite enough to satiate the demands of the Kirkland wireless broadband provider.
In a SEC filing Thursday, Clearwire said that it will need to raise more cash in order to keep the business afloat over the long term as it transitions to a new long-term evolution network.
The company wrote in the filing:
“Over the long term, we will need to greatly expand our revenue base by increasing sales to our existing wholesale partners, primarily Sprint, and by adding additional wholesale partners. To be successful with either, we believe it is necessary that we deploy Long Term Evolution, or LTE, technology, which is currently being adopted by most wireless operators in the United States, including Sprint, as their next generation wireless technology.”
Clearwire initially bet big on a competing networking technology known as WiMax, but most of the industry is making the shift to the faster and more reliable LTE technology.
Network build outs of the scale Clearwire is talking about take a lot of money, and the Craig McCaw-founded company now must consider additional cash in order to make the transition. Clearwire finished the fourth quarter with $1.1 billion in cash and short term investments.
And while the company just topped 10 million subscribers and doubled revenues last year, the losses continue to mount.
As Clearwire makes the network switch, the company warned that it is “unclear” whether the LTE network will generate as much revenue as the WiMax network after 2013.