For a 22% interest, Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks are putting $3.2 billion into a new company that Craig McCaw’s Clearwire and Sprint Nextel, two of the walking wounded, are forming that combines their WiMax wireless broadband businesses.

Trilogy Equity Partners is investing directly.

The deal protects Intel’s existing $620 million investment in Clearwire – on top of its many other WiMax-related investments – and scratches its WiMax itch – it’ll be putting WiMax chips in laptops and MIDs.

Intel’s first WiMax-laden Centrino 2s are due in a few weeks and it’s got the either/or Wi-Fi/WiMax Montevina set for later this year.

It also presumably helps Intel get into phones.

Google will get another advertising, applications and services outlet – including search – and a chance to reinforce its Android operating system for phones. Google is supposed to co-develop the venture’s open Internet protocol for mobile broadband devices.

The new company, 51% owned by Sprint, will be called Clearwire and is supposed to see about the first deployment of a high-speed US-wide 4G WiMax network.

Existing Clearwire shareholders will own 27%. Intel will kick in a billion giving it ~10%, Google $500 million, Time Warner $550, BrightHouse $100, Comcast $1.05 billion and Trilogy $10 million. The total transaction value works out to $14.5 billion.

The deal is supposed to close in Q4, pending approval of the FCC, Hart-Scott-Rodino clearance and the blessings of Clearwire stockholders.

McCaw is expected to serve as non-executive chairman. Clearwire CEO Banjamin Wolff is supposed to keep that job and Sprint CTO Barry West is supposed to be president.

Clearwire had 400,000 wireless users at the end of last year.

Deployment is expected to cover between 120 million and 140 million Americans by the end of 2010. Figure the top 200 markets. It will use Sprint’s towers, fibre network and IT support.

Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House will be resellers, starting with Sprint’s 3G wireless. And Sprint will pre-load certain phones with Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube.

WiMax’ rival is a technology called Long-Term Evolution (LTE), which Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the companies that bought most of the old radio spectrum, are pushing. It’s supposed to have about the same performance as WiMax: 2 Mbps-5 Mbps. So it’s a horserace. Clearwire just has to hold together and execute.

The current Wi-Fi wireless technology is slow and range-constricted.