In August, Sprint Nextel announced that Len Lauer, the chief operating officer, was leaving the company.

Lauer had been one of Sprint's leaders on the company's plans regarding WiMax, which provides high-speed wireless Internet access.

The departure was somewhat sudden, but It was explained as part of plans to accelerate the pace of the transition from the merger of Sprint and Nextel.

After reporting this information on the blog, a reader wondered where Lauer might land: Would he be hired by Kirkland-based Clearwire, which is building a WiMax network competitive to Sprint's?

Nope.

Today, Qualcomm announced it has hired Lauer as a corporate executive vice president and as group president overseeing key divisions: Wireless Business Solutions, MEMS Technologies, government technologies and the mobile TV subsidiary, MediaFLO USA.

The placement is interesting because Qualcomm has been very critical of WiMax as a technology, and instead supports the use of Qualcomm's Flarion technology, still under development.