It is tempting to start looking at Clearwire as an overnight revival story, but it should not be forgotten that the company was pulled back from the brink by Sprint, to whom much of its financial health and near term success is still tied.

Simplexity is also a customer of wholesale LTE provider LightSquared, but Simplexity said the Clearwire deal does not mean it is dropping its LightSquared relationship.

The companies will set up testing and interoperability labs along with other carriers who are part of the Global TD-LTE Initiative and test devices operating at frequencies from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz.

China Mobile’s progress is a boost to Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR), which announced in September that it will collaborate with China Mobile to speed up the development of TD-LTE devices.