Amp’d Mobile content team lands at Clearwire

Clearwire Corp. has reportedly reached a deal to bring Amp’d Mobile Inc’s. 50-plus member content team on board to lead a new content offering under the Clearwire brand.
The move would likely give Clearwire a major boost in content offerings, as it has thus far focused on building up its business as a fixed-wireless broadband service provider. Through the partnership Clearwire would now be uniquely positioned as an entertainment-minded company steadfastly focused on its network and service, particularly thanks to its recent partnership with Sprint Nextel Corp. to build out a nationwide mobile WiMAX network.
Clearwire declined to comment on the deal and the Amp’d Mobile content team is following those cues.
“It’s certainly a big win for Clearwire because I think what Amp’d had there was clearly one of the most compelling data offerings out there,” said Roger Entner, senior vice president of the communications sector at IAG Research. “As good as the team is, it doesn’t have the track record of saving companies, of reversing the doom of the company, but Clearwire’s prospects have substantially improved with the deal they have with Sprint.”
The Amp’d Mobile crew had been shopping themselves out as a cohesive unit to a variety of heavyweights in the wireless space. Considering what caused the demise of Amp’d Mobile’s mobile virtual network operator business, it makes sense that the team would look for a partner in a company that already has the back end of operations-billing, customer service, network coverage-up and running. Such a pairing would enable to team to focus on what it calls the “front end” of operations without worrying about other issues dragging it down.
“It will clearly help them on the content side, it’s just that content is not one of the top two or three decision factors. It’s price, quality and service,” Entner added.
Because Clearwire is rather bullish on the technology side, most obvious in its mobile WiMAX plans, the cross-platform opportunities inherent in the deal would also enable the Amp’d Mobile content team to extend what it started with Amp’d Live to a variety of new venues.
As for the Amp’d Mobile team hedging its bets on WiMAX, Entner said, “I think it’s equally as proven or unproven as the Amp’d model. It’s virgin territory, but these guys are risk takers.
“You have a really fast pipe. You’re biggest challenge as a WiMAX provider is how are you going to fill up that pipe,” he said. “People don’t typically pay a premium for faster download speeds. You know, what else is there? The biggest broadband hog where you can actually raise prices is television. We all bite the bullet and pay more every year for our cable TV.”