4G Services Provider Clearwire and Alianza Unveil New Partnership

Looks like 4G wireless broadband services provider Clearwire Corporation and Alianza will be spending a little bit more time together this holiday season as the two just announced a four-year, hosted software licensing agreement in which Alianza will be responsible for managing Clearwire's voice products and services.

"Alianza's proven expertise and track record in successfully deploying voice-over 4G wireless networks makes this relationship a natural fit for Clearwire," said Dow Draper, Clearwire senior vice president and general manager of retail, in a statement. "Alianza's one-stop shopping approach to VoIP service delivery is an ideal solution to Clearwire's need for a turn-key, highly scalable, customizable voice platform that provides us with the opportunity to consider new consumer offerings previously unavailable to CLEAR."

As part of the new agreement, Alianza, a provider of cloud-based VoIP solutions, will oversee day-to-day voice operations for Clearwire and supply all end-to-end software components of the hosted voice platform, including soft switch, application feature server, call rating, CPE provisioning, monitoring, security, and end-user self-support tools.

For Alianza, the partnership only brings holiday cheer.

"We are excited to be a part of Clearwire's strategy for delivering VoIP services bundled with 4G wireless broadband to customers across the United States," said Brian Beutler, chief executive officer of Alianza. "This is a key agreement for Alianza, and we are looking forward to providing Clearwire with the highest quality and most reliable voice services available."

Alianza's end-to-end voice platform aggregates all the back-office platform management, product management, and end-user support functions into a single Web-based administrative user interface. With the platform, administrative functions that typically require manual processes can become automated through Alianza's API and reduce Clearwire's overall cost of management related to voice services.

"This hosted software agreement is a great move for both Clearwire and Alianza, one that will have near-term and long-term benefits for both companies," observed Diane Myers, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. "In addition to providing improvements in system management, upfront costs, and overall VoIP profitability, Alianza's cloud-based VoIP delivery platform gives operators the strategic benefit of leveraging best practices from operators across Alianza's customer network in order to accelerate voice services deployments."

For Clearwire, the holidays came long before this week as a few days ago the company announced that its goal of rolling out the nation's first wide-channel 4G LTE network has became a bit more obtainable as the company has raised a total of $734 million in funding from a public stock offering and a separate transaction with its majority owner, Sprint.

The Bellevue, Wash. company announced on Tuesday that it sold more than 200 million shares of Class A common stock at $2.00 per share, totaling net proceeds of $384.1 million after underwriter discounts and commissions. Clearwire also unloaded another 173 million shares of Class B common stock to Sprint for an additional $331.4 million.