How's that for a play on words? The Street is reporting that the Sprint-Clearwire deal may finally be on again thanks to a big fat check from Intel.

Intel is expected to infuse two billion (as in "b") dollars into the shaky (understatement of the week alert) partnership between Sprint and Clearwire to hook up and create a coast-to-coast Wi-Max network. The deal has been on hold for a few months now, after Sprint's CEO flew the coop last fall.

Intel not only brings a very big bag of money to the party, it also brings its new set of Wi-Max compatible chips that should be standard fare in most new notebooks by summer.

If you'd like to read up on Wi-Max, here's an article I recently wrote for this site that's a good primer on the subject.