Unwired in Intel court battle

update The NSW Federal Court has reportedly ordered Unwired to pay back the $37 million Intel invested in the wireless telco in August 2005 — with interest.

This morning, The AustralianIT reported that Intel had demanded a further $18.5 million from Unwired, now owned by Kerry Stokes' Seven Network.

Intel's investment in Unwired was supposed to be used to expand the company's services beyond Sydney, but the bulk of Unwired's planned national wireless network has not eventuated.

The AustralianIT reported that Intel had asked to be paid back shortly after Seven acquired Unwired in early 2008.

"Intel continues to support the deployment of WiMAX worldwide, and hopes to keep working with Unwired as they deploy a 2.3GHz WiMAX network," an Intel Australia spokesperson said.

"Intel Capital is typically an early seed investor and with the change of ownership to Seven, we believe Unwired is well equipped financially to build out its WiMAX network. We cannot further comment on this matter as it is before the courts".