Sidecut Reports

If you follow this blog you know we are big fans of the way our pal Andy Abramson thinks, especially when he thinks big. Some required reading for this long weekend is Andy’s thoughtful take on “sponsored” Wi-Fi, who pays for Internet access and communications going forward — a blend of thinking as thorough as a Thanksgiving table. Take a read and digest the thinking… worth your time.

A billion here, a billion there… pretty soon it’s real money, right? On the heels of its latest investor-led captial fund-raising, Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR) announced Tuesday that it had secured another $920 million in debt financing, putting its recent bounty haul at $2.8 billion for the continued building out of its nascent national WiMAX network.

Since we spent most of the day today hiking in the redwoods near Santa Cruz, we’ll let the fine folks at Clearwire’s PR firm provide the details of all the latest funding, debt and other associated financial activities. Courtesy of JLM Partners on behalf of Clearwire, the wrapup is as follows:

We know there have been a number of financially-related announcements from Clearwire recently, so here is a recap:

* The company recently raised $1.564 billion in equity from strategic investors.

* Clearwire then raised more funding in a concurrent bond offering, which also closed today whereby it raised $1.85 billion. Clearwire used proceeds from the bond offering to pay off existing debt of $1.4 billion. So the balance of that after fees, accrued interest and combined with the Sprint and Comcast rollover notes, was incremental funding of approximately $360 million. At that point, it meant Clearwire had just under $2 billion in new funding.

* Today’s news adds $920 million to that figure for a total capital raise (both equity and net debt) of $2.8 billion.

* And, on top of that, Clearwire still has the opportunity to secure additional funding (up to $295 million) in the rights offering to public shareholders.

What does another billion in capital mean? It means that Clearwire has a green light for 2010 and probably most of 2011 to keep building out its network aggressively.

Taking a little break from my real job this holiday season, I checked out the new ads from Apple, which are trying to show it’s got AT&T’s back in its commercial slap-down against Verizon. Thanks to the post on BusinessWeek I was watching the second new ad when I did a spit-take, seeing who the ficticious “friend” was on the phone: Cousin Ted?

Actually, I don’t have a cousin Ted (to my knowledge) and if you look closely you see the ficticious name is spelled KAPUSTA, not KAPUSTKA. So a close call, but please — no more phone calls, emails and tweets! There’s simply no relation!

(And the first person who posts a comment who can explain the difference in Polish between KAPUSTA and KAPUSTKA wins a free SIDECUT NTK report. Family members and Sidecut staff not eligible.)

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