Nancy Gohring at WiMax News says:

Bloomberg ran a massive story detailing the ups and downs of Craig McCaw’s career: This story is really an admirable feat, quoting a waitress for whom McCaw once left a huge tip, a high school classmate, and a 76-year-old man who McCaw first worked for when he was 16 years old.

All eyes these days of course are on McCaw’s Clearwire venture. The site says that Clearwire Ireland is building networks to cover 14 towns in Ireland, including Dublin and Galway. The Bloomberg piece mentions Clearwire spectrum purchases that cover Copenhagen and I’ve recently also read references to potential Clearwire spectrum buys in Bulgaria and Belgium.

Clearwire has launched service in five cities in the United States but at least one expert thinks that the company may be about to make a much more significant announcement.

Caroline Gabriel, research director at Rethink Research Associates, says according to several sources she calls reliable, Sprint and Clearwire have been negotiating a spectrum sharing deal. Such an agreement might pool the spectrum owned by both companies, allowing Clearwire to focus on quickly building a network across the country while Sprint focuses on its mobile cellular network.

The ReThink Report says 2.3GHz (WCS) is gaining high profile because it is likely to be used for broadband wireless in China and possibly India.

In the US, it consists of twin 15MHz slots, from 2305MHz to 2320MHz and from 2345MHz to 2360MHz, although it is problematic because the 25MHz gap between the two bands is assigned to the Digital Audio Radio Service, raising possible interference problems from DARS terrestrial repeaters.

However, Fujitsu is one company that has made a strong case that the spectral efficiency inherent in OFDM modulation, combined with work being done by various WiMAX developers on enhancing that still further, could make the WCS bands usable by 802.16.

The WCS spectrum will achieve new prominence as mobile WiMAX emerges. This standard is now likely to be heavily based on the Korean Wi-Bro specification, which in its home country is being deployed in 2.3GHz. This makes a WCS profile for 802.16e a strong likelihood in order to encourage international harmonization, which would significantly enhance the value of the RBOCs’ assets here.