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Intel Writes $950 Million Off Clearwire Investment, Time Warner $350 Million
mocoNews — ... Intel made the investment with the intention of increasing the market for its chips, and while this isn't a cash loss it will affect the books. "Under current accounting rules, a company has to test for "impairment," or whether or not an intangible asset such as an equity investment has gone down, every year. And in the U.S., once an asset is impaired, it can't get added back onto the books, even if the value does eventually rise" notes GigaOM. Of course, with the sharemarket taking such a beating in 2008 Intel won't be the only ones making an impairment. I'm not ...

Intel Writes Off $950M on Clearwire Bet
Xconomy — ... Intel is taking a $950 million asset impairment charge from its investment in Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire, because of the declining value of Clearwire’s stock, according to this report in GigaOm. Clearwire, the brainchild of wireless pioneer Craig McCaw, is building a national WiMAX network to improve broadband wireless connections. Clearwire (NASDAQ: ...

Another Blow to WiMAX
No Jitter — ... Intel's announcement that it'll take a charge of almost $1 billion related to its Clearwire investment represents another indication of the huge challenge that WiMAX technology faces. I had a chance to talk with Michael Finneran, our resident wireless expert, about this latest development, and here are a few of his insights: ...

Time Warner Results: Cable Demand Takes a Hit [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... Time Warner Cable also was the latest company to get hit by Clearwire’s declining share price: it wrote off $367 million of its $500 million investment in the WiMAX venture. That still seems too high a valuation, given that Time Warner Cable says it expects to roll out a wireless service with Clearwire in at least one city this year. I was expecting a faster roll out. Perhaps Clearwire will give us a ...

Economy Slows Cable’s Momentum [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... On the wireless front, aside from a $600 million Clearwire write down (also taken by Intel, Time Warner Cable and Google), there’s nothing new to report. For those looking ahead, ...

Google’s New Fund Should Advance Its Goals, If It Has Them [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... One of Om’s sources tells him that the fund will be investing for profits as well as for strategic reasons, which is what Intel’s current corporate VC fund does. Sometimes those two goals conflict — Intel’s money-losing bet on Clearwire and WiMAX is a good example — and watching Google weather those conflicts may help us determine how well it plans to walk the line between backing cool technology and backing cool technology for capital gains. If done well, even the money-losing companies will still advance ...

Intel Promotes Broadband and Itself [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... to run the servers a user pings when she wants to download the proxy on her power-sucking PC. However, for Intel’s shareholders, the cost savings on postage — as well as the likelihood that many of the computers involved in accessing and keeping the proxy online contain Intel’s chips — do make this something to crow about. Especially given that the proxy revisits some grim news, such as the drop in net income year-over-year and a $938 million write off of Intel’s Clearwire investment. ...

Clearwire Needs Money, So Hopes Cable Needs WiMAX [GigaOM]
GigaOM Network — ... and (so far) led to more than $1 billion in writeoffs. But Morrow has a plan, which looks surprisingly like taking advantage of the fact that cable companies and Sprint don’t have a mobile broadband offering outside of WiMAX. From the ...