Never mind that '4G' stuff, Sprint now says
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Now that&#160;WiMax has been certified as a form of 3G mobile data infrastructure, Sprint Nextel is changing its tune about the WiMax network it plans to launch commercially in April.Last year when Sprint was shopping around for a &quot;4G&quot; technology, it had a lot to say about how 4G would do something 3G networks couldn&#39;t. WiMax won out as its 4G network of choice. But in a keynote address Thursday at CTIA Wireless I.T. &amp; Entertainment in San Francisco, an executive of Sprint&#39;s WiMax business, Xohm, sang a different tune.&quot;I think we spend entirely too much time talking about the Gs,&quot; said Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint. Last week, the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union certified WiMax as a 3G technology, providing a seal of approval many governments require for carriers to deploy it. Wider deployment generally means lower equipment prices, which helps service providers.That&#39;s not to say the carrier no longer wants to differentiate WiMax. In his presentation, Gude played up the wide band of spectrum Xohm will be able to use, which he said will cut down on delays for individual users the same way a multilane freeway can move faster than a two-lane highway even when the speed limit is the same. In the real world, a lot of people want to use the network at the same time, he said.But more important is the business model of the two networks, Gude said, characterizing the traditional cellular business as more closed and controlled, while Xohm&#39;s business will tap into the dynamics of the open Internet. The company is opening itself up to partners for application development as well as connected devices, he said. The best known of these deals, announced in July, was&#160;an agreement with Google to develop a variety of Internet-based services.Sprint hopes a wide range of devices, including cameras, media players, and in-car electronics, ultimately will connect to the WiMax network. Instead of Sprint stores, they will be sold in the most logical places for their device types, such as consumer electronics stores. The first devices to come for Xohm next year will be wireless cards for notebook PCs, which Gude expects to be sold in the computer departments of electronics stores.The company will also have open API for third parties to develop services to run on the network. As an example, Gude envisioned a video portal that users could navigate using the five buttons traditionally found on video players. Xohm will probably charge for some of what it offers to third parties, but its aim is not to stifle innovation, he said.Sprint isn&#39;t getting out of its cellular business now that it&#39;s starting Xohm -- which it expects to reach 100 million U.S. residents by the end of 2008 -- but seems to be looking at it in a different light now.&quot;We are a content distribution industry,&quot; Gude said. It&#39;s just that for most of cellular&#39;s history, all the content has been user-generated and consisted of talking.
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US mobile firm Sprint has detailed what it will spend on upgrading its network and getting it ready for 3G services. The big winners are Lucent, which gets $1.5bn over three years, Nortel, which gets $1bn
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Sprint Nextel has launched a new device and service that will improve cell phone coverage indoors.
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Sprint Corp., the No. 4 US mobile- phone company, said its customers will get access to 2,300 public wireless Internet connections run by SBC Communications Inc.
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Sprint Nextel and its hardware partners sought to convince a small audience at the Consumer Electronics Show that their WiMax plans are on track, despite the recent departure of Sprint&#39;s CEO and the dissolution of its partnership with Clearwire.&quot;We are exactly where we said we&#39;d be,&quot; said Barry West, Sprint Nextel&#39;s CTO and president of the company&#39;s Xohm WiMax business unit. Sprint is in the process of soft-launching in Chicago and Baltimore, he said.Executives from Nokia and Samsung said they both expect to have user devices ready for the second-quarter launch. In addition, Motorola said it is working on a device that will operate over Sprint&#39;s EvDO (evolution, data optimized) cellular network, Wi-Fi, and WiMax.Since the&#160;ouster of Gary Forsee, the former CEO and chairman of Sprint Nextel, who was thought to be a champion of the company&#39;s WiMax plans, onlookers have speculated that the network might not roll out as planned. In addition,&#160;Sprint Nextel ended a partnership with Clearwire&#160;to jointly deploy WiMax, a further cause for uncertainty. Sprint has been hemorrhaging mobile subscribers and recording declining revenues since its purchase of Nextel.Beyond the unrest internally at Sprint, the company faces critics of WiMax who say that the technology won&#39;t work as well as cellular technologies in a mobile environment and that it won&#39;t support international roaming as easily as the cellular standards.But in describing the reasons why Sprint chose WiMax and why it intends to aggressively pursue the network, West further sought to soothe market qualms about the future.&quot;Being first to market is a huge advantage,&quot; he said. &quot;And WiMax technology is here, now, and mature.&quot;While an investment in a totally new technology requires a strong reason for change, this won&#39;t be the first time Sprint&#39;s doing it, he noted. WiMax doesn&#39;t follow on the upgrade path for CDMA, the basis for Sprint&#39;s cellular network, so it requires a totally new network.Sprint did that first when it moved from an analog cellular network to digital, West said. The same went for the move to third-generation technology, although in that case Sprint stuck with the CDMA path.Sprint also considered LTE (Long Term Evolution), a fourth-generation mobile technology, but one big disadvantage is that it&#39;s not yet available, he said.Moving to WiMax represents a shift to a new air interface technology: OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) instead of CDMA, which is the basis of the current 3G technologies. According to West, when CDMA is deployed in a wider section of spectrum, which helps boost throughput, the computational complexity required goes up exponentially. That requires higher-performance chips, which come with a steep price tag, he said.With WiMax, Sprint plans to use a wide section of spectrum that can dynamically switch from carrying data up or down, depending on user requirements, he said.Beyond the radically different network technology, Sprint envisions a very different business model than cellular, one that will support any kind of standard device.&quot;Look at the cellular model. It was very successful but also very frustrating,&quot; West said. He was referring to the business model in the United States where operators subsidize phones and then require long-term subscriptions from users.With Xohm, Sprint will allow any WiMax-compliant device to run on the network, he said. End-users will buy the devices themselves, probably at a variety of retail stores and hopefully for a low price because vendors expect the cost of WiMax chips to drop dramatically, like Wi-Fi. &quot;Since I&#39;ve got no money in you, I don&#39;t need a contract,&quot; West said. That opens the door to a wide array of new pricing scenarios. End-users could pay for the day, week, month, or on a regular subscription, he said.While West declined to cite specific prices, he said a monthly subscription to Xohm will be comparable to existing DSL rates.Initially, Sprint will sell PC cards and modems, but by the end of this year as many as&#160;10 different kinds of devices could be available, he said. Navigation and gaming devices are possibilities, he said.If the market has any doubts about Sprint&#39;s plans for the network, it should rest assured that, regardless, the future of WiMax is more certain, panelists said. &quot;WiMax is bigger than Sprint,&quot; said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president and general manager for Intel Capital and for Intel&#39;s WiMax business.Motorola alone has 17 contracts for networks and is involved in 60 trials, said Fred Wright, senior vice president and general manager at Motorola. &quot;This technology is real, it&#39;s not a fairy tale,&quot; he said.
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Verizon Wireless and Sprint (NYSE: FON) are giving their customers a break, cutting their fees for number portability, which the carriers have charged all customers to meet the costs of enabling wireless users to keep their phone numbers when they switch service providers.
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By David Hayes, The Kansas City Star, Mo.  Feb. 25--Here's one that Sprint bashers won't like.   A Texas technology firm studied calls made from more than 130,000 wireless phones and found that Sprint offers the most reliable service among the top mobile phone companies.
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Verizon Wireless on Tuesday dropped its opposition to a plan to give Nextel Communications (NXTL) valuable airwaves, removing a big hurdle to a deal aimed at fixing cell phone interference
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Sprint Corp. (FON.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Friday said it plans to cut up to 700 jobs as it realigns its business to focus on wireless and Internet services and takes a non-cash network impairment charge.
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Don't expect new IP phone services to be nearly as prevalent tho on PCs, says cellular service.
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The company announces a new version of its wireless messaging and data access software.
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If Sprint Corp. and Nextel Communications wind up merging late next year, don&#39;t expect the new Sprint Nextel to come roaring out of the gates with the kinds of massive service upgrades rolled out by the new Cingular Wireless LLC.
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Sprint Corp. (FON.N) said on  Friday it made a deal that will let it nearly double the number of places it offers short-range wireless Internet connections.
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(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel's ambitious Xohm WiMax vision will be based on a radical change in the way users pay for the service compared with cellular plans. Users will sign up for wireless broadband for a day, a month, or a year without a contract tied to a specific device. Payment could be made via a credit card wirelessly. The pricing approach, described in broad strokes by Sprint chief technology officer Barry West Wednesday at WiMax World in Chicago, will be designed on the principle of "affordable" broadband and "around the needs of the individual," he said in an interview. That approach breaks down the concept now seen with cellular plans, in which users typically buy a two-year contract in part to subsidize the cost of a single mobile device that a user is locked into using. A Sprint spokesman explained that the proposed pricing will rely on subscriptions, but not contracts in the sense associated with typical cellular contracts. And the longer the subscription a customer buys, the cheaper the service will be, he said. West said Sprint will announce pricing early next year, but also said it will probably be based on tiers of service. The cost of devices, such as laptop cards able to transmit mobile WiMax, will approximate the cost of a 3G broadband laptop card today, he said. In response to a question from an audience member, West also said that Xohm will not be backed by what the industry calls service-level agreements, a kind of guarantee that a minimum bandwidth will be provided or the customer receives a refund. "We will give you a good experience, but not SLAs," West said. Several Sprint executives have described Xohm WiMax speeds that are expected to be 2Mbps to 4Mbps, although the technology is capable of 10Mbps. At a demonstration onboard a moving tour boat on the Chicago River Tuesday night using Motorola gear, mobile WiMax shared across 12 laptops and cell phones was clocked at 2.5Mbps downward. West noted that the demonstration was across only one channel, and that Sprint will be able to offer many channels to handle users at a single antenna site, offering plenty of bandwidth for many users. West, who calls himself a technology "pragmatist," said he does not envision any hidden technology bugaboos in the nationwide rollout of Xohm planned for next year. In the next three years, he has predicted 50 million devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, will be WiMax-certified. Getting the certification process for interoperability in order will be difficult, but he said that even if there are 100,000 different devices, it is conceivable all of them could be served from only 10 different chip sets. "That's not unmanageable," he said. By contrast, West said Xohm's biggest challenge will be servicing the needs of 210 million Internet users in the United States alone, and meeting their demands for access, applications, and services. In his keynote, West said some critics have already begun to question whether West's predictions for Xohm's growth are too ambitious. He said commercial rollouts are still on schedule for the second quarter of 2008, and work has begun on 10,000 base stations nationally, with 20,000 WiMax antennas. The initial rollout in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington in December is "pretty much on target," he added. As for competition, West said he doesn't see Verizon Wireless or AT&T.
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A Sprint official acknowledges, however, that the carrier's full-scale deployment still awaits budget approval by new management.
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Underdog mobile operator Sprint Nextel Corp. quietly rolled out an emerging technology on Monday to give customers a strong cellular signal and flat-rate calling at home.
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New Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse has lots of choices as he&#160;takes over the ailing mobile carrier&#160;and looks for problems to start solving.Sprint, the third-biggest wireless operator in the U.S., is&#160;losing subscribers as it keeps working through the merger of Sprint and Nextel, which occurred in 2005. On Tuesday,&#160;Sprint announced Hesse is taking over immediately for Gary Forsee, who was forced out by the company&#39;s board in October. Hesse, 54, previously led Embarq, the local wireless carrier Sprint spun off as part of the Nextel deal.Sprint needs to both distinguish itself from competitors and get its own house in order, according to mobile industry analysts.&quot;They couldn&#39;t go on without someone who&#39;s willing to set a direction,&quot; said Avi Greengart of Current Analysis. Sprint could try to compete with Verizon Wireless and AT&amp;T Wireless on price, or with more flexible terms of service, or bring out more innovative devices, but it&#39;s failed so far to choose, according to Greengart.&quot;Their brand right now doesn&#39;t stand for anything,&quot; he said.One thing the Sprint name has been associated with recently is disappointing customer service. Reporting on the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company blamed accelerating customer &quot;churn&quot; to other carriers in part on longer help calls and waits for those calls. The introduction of simplified bills, expected to continue until the middle of 2008, boosted the number of those calls, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sprint also noted new handsets at rival carriers, clearly a reference to AT&amp;T&#39;s Apple iPhone.Meanwhile, thanks to about 700,000 subscribers quitting the aging Nextel network, Sprint&#39;s subscriber base as a whole declined by a net 337,000 in the quarter. The carrier said it had about 54 million subscribers on Sept. 30.What could most set Sprint apart is also its biggest gamble, the WiMax wireless broadband network it plans to build across the U.S. at an estimated cost of US$5 billion. Though the WiMax network is likely to be in place first, set to reach 100 million people by the end of 2008, Sprint&#39;s main rivals plan to have their own high-speed data offerings using a similar technology, LTE (Long-Term Evolution). And WiMax won&#39;t fix Sprint&#39;s long-overdue need to harmonize its cellular operations, currently split between CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and Nextel&#39;s older iDEN technology, Greengart said.If it goes ahead with WiMax -- interim CEO Paul Saleh said this month the business might be spun off -- Sprint will have to convince skeptical investors it&#39;s making the right move, said Yankee Group&#39;s Phil Marshall. It will also need to find a way for WiMax to truly complement the cellular business, Marshall said. So far, Sprint has painted WiMax as a mobile service distinguished from its conventional voice offerings by the promise of an any-application, any-device model. A better plan would be to push WiMax as an alternative to wired broadband that&#39;s bundled with Sprint&#39;s cellular service, Marshall said.However, in the short term, Hesse just needs to get the company to run its existing businesses better, Marshall said. Cleaning up customer service would be one key move, he added. Judging from Hesse&#39;s previous performance -- he once headed AT&amp;T Wireless -- the new CEO is qualified to do this, according to Marshall.&quot;He&#39;s very pragmatic and systematic in his management style,&quot; Marshall said.&#160;