Dan Hesse, Sprint Nextel’s new CEO and the man in charge of turning the troubled company around, said in a conference call yesterday that Sprint’s still exploring the possibility of a WiMAX partnership with Clearwire.

“Sprint has an enormous asset—nearly 100 megahertz of un-utilized spectrum—and we have the opportunity to have a three-year head start with our Xohm service, true wireless broadband with multi-megabit speed,” he said, according to a mocoNews.net article. “We have had wide ranging discussions with Clearwire on potential relationships but no final agreements have been reached.”

The main focus for Sprint, according to Hesse, is to get its main wireless business back into the black. That’s important, sure, but I’d submit that Sprint should get this Xohm thing up and running as soon as possible because it could probably help turn things around relatively quickly. If the service is fast enough and affordable enough, you’d see a puff of smoke where I’d just been standing in the doorway of my nearest Comcast office after turning in my cable modem.

In preparation for a more widespread Xohm launch (current test cities include Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington DC), Hesse said that later this year, Sprint will be pushing out dual-mode devices capable of working on both CDMA and WiMAX networks.

Sprint: WiMax Partnership With Clearwire Still Possible; Dual-Mode Handsets Out This Year [mocoNews.net]