Media interest concerning a renewed WiMAX venture between Clearwire and Sprint has emerged once again following a Wall Street Journal report that Intel’s venture capital arm could invest up to US$2 billion into a Clearwire-Sprint alliance. According to Unstrung, Intel Capital has already invested more than US$600 million in Craig McCaw’s wireless venture, the largest investment the firm has made in a single company.

ThinkEquity Partners analyst Eric Kainer says Clearwire is “close to the finish line” with a new deal that could also include Google and SK Telecom. Last November Sprint scrapped a WiMAX partnership with Clearwire under which the companies would have joined forces on marketing, distribution and network access for the nationwide 2.5GHz deployment. It said at the time that it would keep talking to Clearwire.