Ben Wolff's High-Wireless Act

The proposed $14.5 billion joint agreement between wireless internet provider Clearwire Corp. and cellular giant Sprint Nextel Corp. hasn’t even closed yet. But that hasn’t stopped Ben Wolff from dreaming about what the new company will look like in just a few years.

“Most importantly, it means not being tethered to your computer anymore,” Wolff says from his chair in a large conference room at Clearwire’s posh headquarters in Kirkland’s Carillon Point development, on the shores of picturesque Lake Washington.

Wolff, a sharply dressed and compact man, can be a bit long winded when he talks about Clearwire, the latest brainchild of wireless mogul Craig McCaw. Speaking in a run-on cadence with little hesitation or inflection in his voice, Wolff comes off like a man who knows exactly what he’s talking about.

He should. A mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer by training, he spent years at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, where he worked on transactions concerning a number of McCaw-owned entities. He has been directly involved with McCaw since 2003, first as president of McCaw’s personal investment arm, Eagle River Investments. In 2004, he joined Clearwire and became CEO last year.

Wolff envisions a “WiMax” wireless network that enables customers to gain access to the internet from wherever they happen to be and from whatever device they desire, be it a laptop, mobile phone, BlackBerry or iPod—and all at broadband speeds. It’s a grandiose vision, full of hope and the potential to balloon Clearwire’s revenues beyond imagining. (The company, like many in the telecom sector, has never shown a profit.)

But when all the promised whiz-bang wireless services around the deal are stripped away, the proposed merger between Clearwire and Sprint Nextel’s Xohm network—which, at press time, was expected to close by the end of 2008—is really a matter of survival for the two companies. Wireless industry experts say Clearwire is too small to go it alone. By the same token, many think Sprint’s Xohm is fighting a losing battle against competitors AT&T and Verizon Communications.

Together, though, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel could be a potentially powerful entity that is rich in the lifeblood of the wireless telecommunications world: spectrum. The more spectrum a wireless provider has—and Clearwire and Sprint combined have more than any other player—the more customers it can reach with new wireless services.

What the new entity may not have on its side, however, is

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