Struggling wireless provider Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) has raised cash to beef up its network with new, faster technology.

Bellevue, WA-based Clearwire says it netted $715.5 million in stock sales Tuesday—$384.1 million in public share sales and another $331.4 million in a separate, private transaction with Sprint, its majority shareholder and customer.

It’s another big step in the rebuilding process that Clearwire CEO Erik Prusch has been quarterbacking since he took over the company in August from interim CEO John Stanton (previously, Prusch had served as CFO).

In a statement, Prusch said the infusion of cash “will enable us to continue delivering 4G mobile broadband service to meet the rapidly growing demand in the industry. We remain ideally and uniquely positioned to serve both wholesale and retail customers well into the future.”

Sprint’s participation in the stock sale is part of a $1.6 billion financing lifeline announced earlier this month, which allowed Clearwire to make a debt payment that it had considered skipping or paying late.

Clearwire was an early entrant in building fourth-generation, or 4G, networks in the U.S. But it based that network around a technology called WiMax, and the industry is now moving toward a faster technology known as Long-Term Evolution, or LTE. Clearwire has said previously that it could need around $600 million to build LTE capacity.

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Remember when Sprint (NYSE: S) said it would buy more stock if Clearwire made an offering sometime in the future? Well, the bill’s about to come due: Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) says it plans to sell $300 million in Class A common shares. The sale’s underwriters also will get a 30-day option to buy up to $45 million more in Class A shares.

Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire said the stock sale will help finance its planned construction of a fourth-generation (or 4G) network based on technology known as long-term evolution, or LTE. Clearwire’s existing network is based around a different kind of technology, known as WiMAX, which is being passed by as LTE becomes standard in the industry.

Clearwire has previously announced plans to build an LTE network along its WiMAX offering, but needed about $600 million to pay for the project. Majority shareholder Sprint cut a financing deal with Clearwire last week to provide up to $1.6 billion, allowing Clearwire to make a debt payment that it had considered skipping.

That lifeline from Sprint included a commitment for Sprint to purchase stock based on its existing 49.6 percent voting interest in Clearwire. Sprint will be buying Class B common shares, Clearwire said in Monday’s announcement. The previously announced deal with Sprint also included a pre-payment of up to $350 over two years for capacity on Clearwire’s LTE network, if Clearwire hits milestones for building the network by June 2013.

J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch, and Jefferies & Company will be the joint book-running managers, Clearwire said.

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Financially troubled wireless provider Clearwire and majority shareholder Sprint are keeping their seemingly reluctant partnership alive today, announcing a new injection of up to $1.6 billion from Sprint for current and future network capacity, along with possible equity sales.

The move allows Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire to make a $237 million debt payment due today—a bill that money-losing Clearwire had said it might skip or pay late. Clearwire had about $700 million in cash and about $4 billion in long-term debt at the end of the third quarter.

As you’d expect, shares of Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) bounced up on the Sprint (NYSE: S) financing deal. The company’s stock price has been tied very closely to the constant swings in Sprint’s attitude toward its partner—earlier this year, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse essentially said a Clearwire bankruptcy wouldn’t really be all that bad.

Clearwire’s present fourth-generation, or 4G, wireless network is based on a technology called WiMAX. Clearwire, founded by wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, made an early bet on WiMAX that hasn’t panned out—the industry has since coalesced around a faster technology known as Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, for future networks.

Clearwire is planning to transition to an LTE network in the future, but it needs about $600 million to pay for that switch. It looks like today’s Sprint deal would supply some, but not all of the money needed to finance that work, which means it’s still an open question who will pay for the rest. Indeed, most of the money from Sprint is for WiMAX services.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Sprint pays $926 Million for unlimited WiMAX service in 2012 and 2013. Sprint and Clearwire also said the WiMAX network will be live through 2015, even though Sprint apparently hasn’t committed to selling WiMAX-compatible devices beyond next year.

• Sprint also could pre-pay up to $350 million over two years for capacity on Clearwire’s LTE network, but that depends on Clearwire hitting milestones for building the network by June 2013. Again, Clearwire will apparently need more investors to pay for an LTE network.

• As the majority shareholder, Sprint says it will buy more equity in Clearwire if the smaller company raises between $400 and $700 million.

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One thing you can say about having Sprint as a majority investor: It’s not boring.

Shares of Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) bounced up today after the third-quarter earnings report from Sprint (NYSE: S), particularly CEO Dan Hesse’s comments about a possible deal for Clearwire’s as-yet-unbuilt long-term evolution network.

As quoted by Forbes’ Eric Savitz, Hesse said that Sprint has “signed a nonbinding cooperation agreement with Clearwire, to work together on the technical specifications of the Clearwire LTE network and to ensure a superb customer experience for Sprint customers on the Clearwire LTE network.” That kind of agreement is needed to pave the way for any broader deal to buy LTE service from Clearwire, Hesse added.

As Bloomberg reports, any Sprint deal to use Clearwire’s LTE network wouldn’t be in the picture until 2013. Clearwire still needs to actually build an LTE-based network—its fourth-generation infrastructure is currently based on a different kind of technology, called WiMax. It could cost Clearwire around $900 million to make the switch, but Sprint apparently isn’t ponying up cash for that effort yet.

This may all sound like pretty minor stuff, given all the tentative deals and possible partnerships and no commitments of money. But given Clearwire’s money-losing financial performance and the recent buffeting it’s taken on Wall Street, any appearance of a lifeline from its patrons at Sprint makes for big news.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that another round of Sprint statements sent Clearwire stock tanking. At that time, Sprint was rolling out its own Clearwire-free plans for an LTE 4G network, and Hesse pointedly said that he had nothing to announce beyond 2012 regarding Clearwire. Pressed by investors in that previous call, Hesse basically said that a bankruptcy by Clearwire wouldn’t be that bad.

Clearwire responded to that beating by pre-reporting some selected third-quarter financial numbers, showing record quarterly revenues and subscriber additions, along with a narrowing loss. Clearwire is scheduled to release its full third-quarter earnings report next Wednesday after the market closes.

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Sprint (NYSE: S) is unveiling a new plan to upgrade its national wireless network today, and Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire is not part of the picture. That’s sent shares of Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) into a nosedive, losing a third of their value in afternoon trading.

It had previously seemed that Sprint, as the majority shareholder, might have to play a key role in helping Clearwire remake its own network. Clearwire is a wholesale provider, but its early fourth-generation (or 4G) network is based on a kind of wireless technology called WiMax—and WiMax is quickly being displaced as long-term evolution, or LTE, becomes the industry standard.

Clearwire has said it needs close to $1 billion for its network upgrade—some $600 million to add LTE, with another $300 million or so to finish work on its existing WiMax infrastructure. But today, Sprint announced a $5 billion plan to upgrade its own network. And an investment in boosting Clearwire wasn’t part of the plan.

Even before today, Sprint had been sending increasing public signals that Clearwire is basically on its own. And the company hammered home the point even further today: As the Puget Sound Business Journal reports, Sprint said it wouldn’t offer Clearwire-compatible phones after next year, and CEO Dan Hesse said Sprint had “nothing beyond 2012 to announce” about network arrangements with Clearwire.

There’s also this Associated Press report on the analyst and investor meeting, which includes this key scene of Hesse basically pooh-poohing Clearwire’s situation:

“In a testy exchange with Sprint executives, a member of the audience at the investor meeting questioned why Sprint would risk forcing Clearwire to seek bankruptcy protection when it owns 54 percent of the company, and could lose its share of Clearwire’s spectrum in a bankruptcy case.

Sprint executives didn’t directly address that possibility, but Hesse noted that no bankruptcy case involving a wireless company has resulted in a disruption of service.”

Clearwire’s response was similar to the notes it’s sounded recently: Despite all the turmoil, it has lots of spectrum, and “Sprint remains dependent on Clearwire for 4G” today.

“As demand for mobile data increases, Clearwire remains the only viable 4G wholesaler with an operating 4G network, substantial spectrum resources, and a global technology road map to serve this growing market,” the company said in a statement.

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—A startup caught in the crossfire of Amazon.com‘s battles with big-box retailers and money-starved state governments is finding a new home in Seattle. Shopobot, a price-tracking site for electronics shopping, got its start in San Francisco, including a spot in the AngelPad accelerator program. But when Amazon dropped its affiliates over an attempt to make it collect California sales tax, Shopobot high-tailed it for Seattle, where the founders both have roots. Irony alert: They ended up with offices at the Founder’s Co-op building, right next door to the new Amazon campus.

—Several regional angel investor groups are tying together in a bid to sweeten deals for entrepreneurs, and keep startups in the angel ecosystem a little longer—rather than fleeing into VC-land. Seattle’s Alliance of Angels is among the groups joining the new Angel Syndication Network. The idea: Develop common standards for due-diligence so that others in the network can make investments without everyone re-doing the whole process, potentially lengthening the financial “runway” for entrepreneurs.

—Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna joined his counterparts from six other states in backing the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit blocking AT&T‘s $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile. McKenna cited the potential for higher consumer prices, and there’s also the nagging issue of lost jobs at T-Mo’s Bellevue headquarters if the deal goes through. McKenna is the Republican favorite for next year’s governor’s race, where he’ll most likely face Democratic Congressman Jay Inslee—who is also no fan of the merger.

—In an amazing and inspirational guest column, former Microsoft executive and entrepreneur Paul Gross tells the story of how he and some other Seattle-area folks tackled the dearth of research into hydrocephalus, and have helped transform the national conversation and funding landscape for this disease. It’s a personal story, as Gross’ young son has the condition.

—Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) took another step towards adopting an LTE-based network by announcing a collaboration with China Mobile, a large Asian provider, to develop common standards for networking gear and end-user devices to run on LTE networks. Clearwire is still looking for the money to plow into the expensive work of building out its network.

—Anyone who’s ever had to shop for insurance coverage knows the pain that Urbanspoon co-founder Adam Doppelt encountered: Nonsensical terminology, confusing explanations, and wild price differences. So what did the tech entrepreneur do about it? He tried to hack together a better solution, of course—the first version of a project called PickHealthInsurance.

—Bill Gates made the list in the first round of stars for the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame, over in Cambridge, MA’s Kendall Square. The other names: Edison, Hewlett, Packard, Jobs, Kapor, and Swanson.

—Finally, we had a flurry of regional financings to detail, led by HootSuite‘s $3 million debt round, and Symform‘s $1 million extension of its Series A.

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Broadband provider Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) is working with a major Chinese company to encourage development of devices for a new fourth-generation wireless network, even as the Kirkland, WA company continues looking for investors to bankroll its expansion.

Clearwire is collaborating with China Mobile to develop common technical specifications for makers of networking gear and mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, that can run on a kind of 4G network technology called TD-LTE. LTE stands for Long-Term Evolution, a type of wireless technology that is quickly becoming the standard for next-generation networks. The company’s release didn’t specify any financial terms of the collaboration.

Clearwire initially built its 4G network on a different kind of technology, known as WiMax. It’s now having to make the switch to LTE, but needs money to do that—some $600 million, along with another $300 million or so to finish work on the WiMax side, the company has said.

There’s no news of investors who have come forward to underwrite those costs yet. Majority shareholder Sprint (NYSE: S) looks to be a key player in determining how Clearwire will be able to get financing for its new LTE network.

In the meantime, deals like the common standards arrangement with China Mobile can help grow the pipeline of devices that’ll be needed for an eventual network. Clearwire named a new CEO in August, tapping Erik Prusch to replace wireless industry pioneer John Stanton, who remains the company’s chairman.

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Continuing its strategy to cut costs, Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) today said that about 700 customer service workers in Las Vegas and Milton, FL, will now be employed by TeleTech, which already had been performing some work for Clearwire. Some 180 workers in both cities will remain on the Clearwire payroll.
The Pensacola News Journal reports that about 370 of Clearwire’s roughly 500 workers in the Florida office will now work for TeleTech, with the balance remaining Clearwire employees. That also means the company is repaying some $2 million in incentive payments from the governor’s office, which the News Journal says Clearwire “received in anticipation of an expansion that will not happen.”
This follows the Kirkland, WA-based wireless network operator’s recent announcement that it would hand over day-to-day network operations to Ericsson, which performs the same function for majority shareholder Sprint (NASDAQ: S). (h/t Geekwire.)

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Wireless network provider Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) continues taking significant steps to remake itself. Today, the Kirkland, WA-based company announced it is handing over day-to-day management of its fourth-generation (4G) network to Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC). The move means that about 700 Clearwire employees will work for Ericsson, “in locations around the United States before mid-year 2011,” the companies said in a news release. Financial terms of the seven-year partnership were not disclosed.

This looks like another sign of Sprint, Clearwire’s majority shareholder, exerting stronger influence over company direction and strategy—Ericsson has a similar management deal with Sprint (NYSE: S) dating to 2009, the press release said. Clearwire cut staff late last year as part of a restructuring plan, and announced at the end of 2010 that founder Craig McCaw was out as chairman.

In March, the company announced that another Northwest wireless pioneer, John Stanton, was taking over as interim CEO after three top officers left Clearwire. And last month, Clearwire and Sprint announced they had settled a lingering dispute over wholesale pricing in a $1 billion deal. At the time, Stanton said that deal would allow Clearwire to operate efficiently for the next two years while planning for growth.

Clearwire’s current 4G network is built around a technology called WiMax, but the company has said it is open to adopting a different kind of technology, called Long-Term Evolution or LTE, that is more widely used by other wireless companies. At the time of the Sprint wholesale deal, Stanton was quoted as saying that Clearwire would, however, need more money to expand to LTE. Clearwire’s current investors also include Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Intel

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Troubled 4G wireless network operator Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) had some positive news today, reporting that it and majority shareholder Sprint had resolved a dispute over wholesale pricing. Sprint (NYSE: S) will pay at least $1 billion over the next two years for use of Clearwire’s service, the companies said in a joint statement.

Interim Chief Executive John Stanton told the Wall Street Journal that the cash allows Clearwire to “operate efficiently over the next couple of years” and plan for expansion. Stanton took over the CEO’s job last month, after Bill Morrow and two other top officers left the Kirkland, WA-based company. Clearwire said at that time that it believed an agreement with Sprint was imminent. Clearwire founder and longtime wireless leader Craig McCaw resigned as chairman a few months back, and late last year Clearwire reported that it was cutting 15 percent of its workforce.

The deal announced today gives Clearwire $300 million this year, $550 million next year, and a $175 million prepayment to allow Sprint continued access to Clearwire’s 4G services. The two companies also said they have an agreement for Sprint phones that operate both on Sprint’s 3G network and Clearwire’s 4G system.

Stanton also declined to comment when asked by the WSJ whether Clearwire was discussing a possible takeover by Sprint, and said Clearwire would need more money if it decides to expand its 4G network to include a second type of technology, known as Long-Term Evololution or LTE. He did say Clearwire’s current investors, which also include Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Intel, may be interested in helping.

Clearwire’s current network is based on a technology called WiMax, but the company has tested LTE systems, and said it is “technology agnostic.” LTE is more widely used by other wireless companies.

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Leadership shake-ups continue at Clearwire: the Kirkland, WA-based company said Thursday that CEO Bill Morrow and two other top officers are out.

Board chairman John Stanton, one of Washington state’s wireless pioneers, is now interim chief executive. Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) said Morrow is stepping down for personal reasons, and also is leaving as a director of the company’s board. Board-member Dennis Hersch will lead the committee charged with hiring a new CEO.

The change comes just a few months after Clearwire founder and longtime wireless leader Craig McCaw resigned as chairman. The company operates a WiMax 4G wireless network.

Clearwire also said Thursday that it believes an agreement is “imminent” to resolve wholesale pricing disputes with Sprint (NYSE: S), which is Clearwire’s majority shareholder. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was quoted yesterday as saying that Clearwire would be part of “every option” for Sprint’s future.

Also leaving are Clearwire’s chief commercial officer, Mike Sievert, and its chief information officer, Kevin Hart. The company’s statement said the pair were going to “pursue other opportunities.”

Erik Prusch moves from chief financial officer to a new chief operations job, handling day-to-day responsibilities. Hope Cochran will be the new CFO, moving up from treasurer.

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Wi-Fi: it’s the new utility, as crucial to many consumers and businesspeople as electricity and telephones. Wi-Fi chips are built into 800 million new laptops, mobile phones, tablet PCs, printers, video game controllers, and TV set-top boxes every year, and Wi-Fi networks blanket virtually every office, library, airport, hotel, café, and campus.

If only Wi-Fi were as dependable as most other utilities. Unfortunately, the more people who install access points in dense urban environments, the more interference arises between devices, slowing everyone’s connections. On top of that, Wi-Fi signals share the unlicensed 2.4-Gigahertz frequency band with Bluetooth, Zigbee, cordless phones, baby monitors, car alarms, ham radio, and even microwave ovens. (Yes, Wi-Fi devices use roughly the same wavelength as the radio pulses that, at much higher power, can bake a potato.) That’s why you might have a blazing-fast, 30-megabit-per-second Wi-Fi connection in one corner of your office, but lose it a minute later if you shift six feet to the left. Especially if someone is using the microwave at lunchtime.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that Wi-Fi signals, like cellular or FM signals, spread indiscriminately in all directions. That’s a feature, not necessarily a bug: your home or office Wi-Fi router doesn’t know where you are, so it has to send signals everywhere. But what if your router were smarter, and could use modern beam-forming technology to shoot a signal straight at your device—then make that beam follow you as you moved from your desk to your couch to your kitchen? In principle, signals from a dynamic, directional Wi-Fi antenna would have a greater range, and would be far less vulnerable to interference.

Well, it turns out this is an idea radio engineers have been thinking about for a while. And there’s a company in Sunnyvale, CA, called Ruckus Wireless that’s making it work so well that cellular carriers may soon start placing Ruckus Wi-Fi systems in public places, where they could help rescue strained 3G networks by taking on much of the data traffic now squeezing through the 3G channel. That’s called “offloading,” and it’s one of the ways harried operators—whose networks now support unanticipated numbers of 3G devices like iPhones, iPads, and Android phones—hope to survive the interim years before the arrival of true 4G technologies, which could offer Wi-Fi-like speeds across much greater distances.

PCCW, Hong Kong’s leading telecom company, has been installing Ruckus Wi-Fi routers in phone booths, which tend to be located in places where there are also lots of people using cell phones. “Pedestrian gathering places are good places to put Wi-Fi access points,” Ruckus CEO Selina Lo says. “PCCW told me that in peak areas, at peak times, they can see as much as 20 percent offload.” If AT&T were able to hand off that much of its 3G traffic to Wi-Fi, it might be able to mollify many of the iPhone owners who are eager to switch to Verizon, on the (iffy) assumption that the other carrier’s network will have more capacity.

Incubated six years ago in the offices of Sequoia Capital in Menlo Park, CA, Ruckus has collected $51 million in venture backing, from Sequoia as well as Firelake Capital, Focus Ventures, Investor AB, Motorola Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and WK Technology Fund. It’s a scrappy and persistent company—the barking dog in its logo isn’t wholly whimsical—and it has reinvented its product line at least twice over the years to adapt to market trends. But the 278-employee startup, which flirted earlier this year with the idea of going public but put the idea on hold due to the sluggish economy, is now under pressure to find a major market for its smart Wi-Fi access points. So there’s a lot riding on the 3G offloading concept—an idea Ruckus adopted from one of its own customers in India, Mumbai-based Tikona Digital Networks (more on that below).

Lo argues that even after 4G technologies like Verizon’s LTE standard take hold, there will be a need for other shorter-range technologies to fill in the inevitable gaps in coverage. “Licensed spectrum is an expensive resource, so there is always going to be … Next Page »

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Qualcomm dominated San Diego’s BizTech news last week, with the kickoff of its World Cup coverage on FLO TV, making a $1 billion bid for broadband spectrum in India, and an acquisition in the Netherlands. You can get that and more here.

—Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) says it’s the provisional winner after bidding more than $1 billion for broadband wireless access spectrum in four Indian cities. After spending that kind of cash, the San Diego wireless giant has big plans to build wireless networks based on its proprietary LTE technology. The move perplexed some observers, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. But a few WiMax services have been deployed in India, and Peggy Johnson, Qualcomm’s executive vice president for the Americas and India, told the U-T that Qualcomm “wanted to ensure” the path from 3G to LTE was assured.

—San Diego has been nurturing a cluster of software companies that specialize in predictive analytics. Now at least four companies that specialize in analytics—Teradata (NYSE:TDC), EDSA, Zementis, and Detectent—are focusing on developing new ways of analyzing data and making predictions that are useful to utilities. As the power grid gets “smarter,” innovations will be needed to help meet state requirements to get a third of their energy from solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources by 2020.

—The World Cup soccer tournament playing in South Africa through July 11 ranks as the No. 1 sporting event in the world. During the last World Cup in 2006, the cumulative audience over the four-week tournament was more than 26.3 billion people. Qualcomm’s FLO TV is broadcasting this year’s World Cup matches to mobile devices, although FLO TV wasn’t able to take advantage of the much bigger audience outside the United States. A FLO TV spokeswoman told me, “We are not satisfied with the overall take-up of mobile TV in the US, but we are optimistic about broadcast, mobile video and future FLO services.”

—After previewing its 3D TVs for reporters at its North America headquarters in San Diego, Sony Electronics says it is now taking orders. Unlike some 3D television makers, though, Sony has placed its bet on technology that requires active shutter 3D glasses that cost $150 a pair.

— Qualcomm—there’s that name again—said its European venture arm has led a new investment round in Anteryon, an optical module maker for mobile phone cameras based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands.

—Paul Barber, the managing general partner of San Diego-based JMI and a longtime investor and director of Bothell, WA-based Vertafore, will get to cash out his firm’s investment. TPG Capital announced plans to acquire Vertafore, which provides software and services to the insurance industry, for $1.4 billion.

—The San Diego area is serving as an extensive test market over the next year for at least 10 different types of plug-in electric vehicles. The largest rollout is scheduled to begin in December as the five-passenger Nissan Leaf all-electric vehicle becomes available here. Nissan plans to sell as many as 1,000 of the zero-emission vehicles in San Diego.

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The big news last week came from venture-backed Veoh Networks, which is filing for bankruptcy liquidation. Founder Dmitry Shapiro told me Veoh was the biggest Internet company that San Diego has ever seen (see below).

—San Diego’s Veoh Networks, a video streaming website, was officially launched in 2005. It raised $70 million in venture capital, grew to 23 million unique visitors a month, and was generating about $1 million in advertising revenue every month. But Veoh Networks pulled the plug last week, and founder Dmitry Shapiro told me a copyright infringement lawsuit sounded its death knell (even though it won a summary judgment in the case).

—Connect, the San Diego non-profit that supports local technology and entrepreneurship, has decided to hire a lobbyist and set up an office in Washington DC, at an estimated cost of $400,000.

—Envision Solar, a privately-held solar development firm founded by San Diego architect (and Xconomist) Robert Noble, will soon become a public company following a reverse merger with a dormant public company. Noble told me Envision Solar needs capital to expand its capabilities in developing solar-integrated infrastructure and building systems.

—Wind turbine technologies startup Viryd Technologies, which was spun out last May by San Diego’s Fallbrook Technologies, just raised $5 million from existing angel investors and China’s Ningbo Shentong Auto Decorations.

—There will be lots of wireless news coming out this week from Barcelona, where the GSMA Mobile World Congress began yesterday. Novatel Wireless (NASDAQ: NVTL), for example, last week claimed it had made the first data transmission call using Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G technology.

—At a time when people spend spend more and more of their lives on the Internet, why does online advertising represent only a fraction of the total amount of advertising? Russ Mann, the CEO of San Diego-based Covario, said the answer could be that the Gen-Xers, who are more comfortable using the Internet, social networking sites, and computers, will have to assume command of corporate marketing departments before we’ll see widespread change.

—San Diego-based Leap Wireless was the subject of fresh merger rumors earlier this month, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Leap has hired investment bankers to advise the company. Now rumors are also circulating about a Leap rival, Dallas-based MetroPCS, after Reuters reported last week that MetroPCS has hired investment banking firms JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG. Leap and MetroPCS were in a merger deal that fell apart in 2007 after the two low-cost wireless carriers failed to agree on a price.

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In what may be a pre-emptive announcement before next week’s GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, San Diego’s Novatel Wireless (NASDAQ: NVTL) says it has successfully made a data transmission call using Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G technology.

LTE is one of several next-generation wireless technology standards that promise increased capacity as cell phone users increasingly download data, photos, and video from the Internet. Novatel says LTE can provide data rates as high as 50 megabits per second on the uplink and 100 megabits per second on the downlink and “an enhanced user experience by leveraging new, wider bandwidth spectrum.”

But as Phone Scoop blogger Eric M. Zeman notes, “Novatel didn’t state what speeds it attained, nor whether or not the equipment used was standards compliant.”

Novatel says that many wireless system operators are planning to overlay fourth-generation LTE systems on their existing 3G networks to augment data capacity in important areas. The company also says it is working with operators, which it did not identify, and plans to launch commercial data services later this year. In the statement issued by Novatel, CTO Slim Souissi says, “We believe our aggressive development efforts will enable us to deliver these innovative solutions with the fastest possible time to market.”

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[Corrected 11/11/09, 3:15 pm. See below] Qualcomm chief operating officer, Len Lauer, says the San Diego wireless chipmaking giant is working across a broad front of technology development to accommodate a surge in wireless data traffic.

“The mobile Internet has arrived,” Lauer says in the opening keynote talk yesterday at the 2009 3G CDMA Americas Regional Conference. With more than 4 billion wireless subscribers around the world now—including 885 million 3G phone users—Lauer says the growth in wireless data is reflected by a roughly one-third increase in revenue reported over the past year by Verizon, AT&T, and other major carriers.

[Corrects to say Lauer was comparing monthly data traffic in 2014, not monthly growth in data traffic] By 2014, or just five years, Lauer says  worldwide mobile data traffic in one month will exceed total mobile data traffic for all of 2008.

Qualcomm founder and former chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs and his son Paul Jacobs, who is Qualcomm’s current chairman and CEO, sounded a similar theme when they warned of capacity constraints last month during a keynote appearance at the CTIA Fall 2009 conference in San Diego.

In addition to the increasing demand for mobile data from smart phones and netbooks, Lauer says the trend can only accelerate as new wireless device categories proliferate, especially in what he calls machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Examples of M2M technology developers include CardioNet, a Pennsylvania wireless health company that uses wireless sensors to continuously monitor heart patients for irregular heartbeats; wireless smart grid technologies being deployed by electric utilities (including San Diego Gas & Electric), and eBook devices like Amazon’s Kindle.

“Other operators are seeing this as a viable market, but it is going to take awhile to develop,” Lauer says, citing estimates that 229 million M2M cellular connections are forecast for 2013. “We do see from Qualcomm’s standpoint this being a very large opportunity for our chips.”

To cope with the surge in wireless data traffic, Lauer outlined a range of technology advances that Qualcomm has underway:

—The latest generation of advanced wireless receivers, which include updated revisions to the EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) telecommunications standard (part of Qualcomm’s CDMA2000 family), operate … Next Page »

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San Diego-based Rayspan said today that it has collected $12.5 million in Series B funding to finance its work on advanced materials that could be used to make smaller, more sensitive, and more versatile antennas for mobile devices. Existing investor Sequoia Capital of Menlo Park, CA, provided part of the money, with the rest coming from new investor Khosla Ventures, also of Menlo Park.

The wireless world is fraught with different, often competing standards for delivering data to mobile devices across small or large distances, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 2G and 3G cellular, and GPS. Coming down the road just behind those are newer technologies like WiMax, Long Term Evolution (LTE), and ultrawideband. It takes a fancy antenna, or several of them, to make a mobile device like a cell phone work on several of these standards at once. And WiMax and LTE work best using an altogether new type of antenna called multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO).

The problem with MIMO antennas to date has been that to work efficiently, they need to be of a certain size—about half of the wavelength of the radio frequency they’re designed to detect. If you make them small enough to fit inside a mobile device, they lose sensitivity.

Rayspan, founded in 2006, is taking advantage of progress in a field called metamaterials to make much smaller MIMO antennas that still have high performance.

Metamaterials are composite materials that are structured on a macroscopic level to have unusual optical or electromagnetic properties. Maha Achour, Rayspan’s co-founder and chief technology officer, has applied for patents on a range of radio-related applications for metamaterials, including MIMO antennas (also called “air interfaces”) with individual elements that are as small as one-tenth to one-fifteenth of a wavelength. Such elements can be printed directly on a circuit board and spaced very closely together, potentially giving small mobile devices full MIMO performance.

Rayspan hopes to license the intellectual property behind its metamaterial antennas to wireless device manufacturers making cellular, Wi-Fi, WiMax, and multiband equipment. Pierre Lamond, a general partner at Khosla ventures, said in today’s announcement that the firm believes Rayspan will become “an industry-leading air interface provider in the huge wireless markets they target.”

Achour is a San Diego wireless industry veteran with a doctorate in physics from MIT. She has worked at
San Diego Research Center, UlmTech, Optical Access, LightPointe, and Tiernan Communication. Her co-founder Franz Birkner, Rayspan’s CEO and president, is managing director of Express Ventures and is a veteran of Dot Wireless (acquired by Texas Instruments), Cognet Microsystems (acquired by Intel), and ComStream (acquired by Spar Aerospace).

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Perhaps the week before Easter was a good time for San Diego’s technology innovators to be taking stock. Amylin is busy weighing how best to fend off dissident investors Carl Icahn and Eastbourne Capital before next month’s annual shareholder meeting. Other San Diego startups, such as Trius Therapeutics and Sangart, are considering how best to move forward in their development of new biopharmaceutical products. So read on!

—San Diego’s Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN)  is preparing for a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn and Eastbourne Capital Management at next month’s shareholder meeting. The two dissident shareholder groups have each nominated a slate of five candidates for the company’s 12-member board of directors, although fielding so many candidates could simply ensure that Amylin’s candidates get elected.

—San Diego wireless chipset provider Qualcomm and Verizon, one of its biggest customers, seem to be on different pages when it comes to deploying the fourth generation mobile phone technology known as LTE, for Long-Term Evolution. Verizon has said it will have LTE in 20 to 35 markets by the end of 2010. But a Qualcomm marketing director said he expects the commercialization of LTE devices won’t happen until 2012 or later.

—The venture purse strings loosened a bit last week in San Diego. Nirvanix, a startup providing “data storage in the cloud,” added $5 million in a secondary round of venture funding. Nirvanix said it previously had raised $18 million in venture funding from Intel Capital, Valhalla Partners, Mission Ventures, Windward Ventures, and the European Founders Fund. Ethertronics, which develops embedded antennas for wireless devices, got an additional $4 million in a secondary round of venture funding. A spokeswoman told me Friday that its investors include Bank of America, Sevin Rosen Funds, and Ridgewood Capital.

—In an interview last week, Trius Therapeutics CEO Jeff Stein said the biotech firm is assessing the best way to move ahead in its development of a new anti-bacterial drug. In mid-stage clinical trials, Stein told me the San Diego company’s drug candidate torezolid cured 96 percent of the patients who had nasty-looking skin infections. But to get to the next stage in clinical trials, Stein says Trius will either have to raise more venture capital or find a strategic partner.

—San Diego-based Sangart is at a crossroads in developing an oxygen-carrying compound called MP4, which is made by purifying and chemically modifying … Next Page »

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Verizon’s schedule for deploying speedy fourth generation mobile phones may be subject to delay. Citing a Deutsche Bank research report issued this morning, GigaOM suggests Verizon won’t make its plan to have LTE (Long-Term Evolution) handsets available by the end of 2010.

The holdup is due to the LTE chip production schedule at San Diego’s Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM). Verizon has said it will have LTE in 20-35 markets by the end of 2010. However, Qualcomm’s LTE chips for data cards won’t be generally available until the second half of 2010, according to Deutsche Bank.

The process of building new chips into phones usually takes up to 18 months after the first chips are out. So LTE chips for handsets might not be available until well into 2011.

Qualcomm marketing director Michael Mamaghani said in San Francisco last week he expects the commercialization of LTE devices to happen in 2012 or later.

LTE represents an upgrade in 3G UMTS technology to 4G mobile technology. Verizon, AT&T, Motorola, and Samsung have generally shown more interest in LTE, while Sprint and Intel are advancing with rival WiMax (‘Worldwide Inter-operability for Microwave Access’) technology. Intel has developed its own WiMax chipset.

Anssi Vanjoki from Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone producer, last week harshly compared WiMax to Betamax, the early video format that was superseded by VHS in the 1980s.

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Japan’s second-largest cellular operator, KDDI, is adopting the next-generation, Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, wireless standard founded on San Diego-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) technology. KDDI is deploying LTE equpment from Hitachi and Nortel that will provide an overlay to its existing CDMA mobile network.

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