Dish DASHED: No Sprint, no Clearwire, no spectrum. No sale

Dish Network has officially withdrawn its offer for Clearwire, giving up the fight against Sprint for control of the firm and its coveted radio spectrum.

The satellite TV company was already slogging it out in a losing battle, after the board said it favoured majority shareholder Sprint's bid to buy, because it had upped its offer to fend off Dish.

Poor old Dish's two-pronged strategy to build a new national network by slurping Clearwire's spectrum and then absorbing the US third-largest wireless carrier Sprint appears to have failed miserably.

Despite increasing its offer for Clearwire and gaining initial favour with the board, Sprint's counter-offer pushed Clearwire out of the running. Dish's attempts to convince everyone that letting Sprint go to a (gasp!) non-American firm like Japan's SoftBank also ran aground.

Sprint shareholders voted earlier this week to take the sweetened deal from SoftBank, which now awaits only the nod of approval from the Federal Communications Commission to close the deal.

The carrier said that around 80 per cent of its shares were voted in favour of SoftBank's $21.6bn offer for 78 per cent ownership of the company. ®