Candidates retool plans for sprint to finish line
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WASHINGTON - Not in a generation has a presidential election been so close for so long. Now, as President Bush seems to be pulling a bit ahead of Sen. John Kerry, every step, and misstep, could affect their frantic race to the finish.
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McCain promises to work with Democrats if he wins GOP nomination, presidency ... Romney campaigns coast-to-coast on way to Super Tuesday finish line
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Sprint (FON:NYSE - news - research) chief Gary Forsee is billing the Nextel (NXTL:Nasdaq - news - research) deal as strength building on strength.
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Sprint Nextel's new chief executive, industry veteran Daniel R. Hesse, may bring serious change to the struggling wireless carrier, saying he will reevaluate its controversial high-speed Internet strategy and consider moving the company's headquarters from Reston.
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In its latest move to restructure and shore up its stock, Sprint Nextel yesterday announced the immediate departures of three top executives, including Chief Financial Officer Paul Saleh.
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Sprint Nextel is sharking up its executive team in an effort to get the company back on track.
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With a week before the first test of the primary season, presidential candidates are pulling out all the stops.
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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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OVERLAND PARK, Kan.  - For Sprint, "winning" is a relative term. After a string of dismal quarters, Wall Street would be happy if CEO Dan Hesse could just stop Sprint's bleeding. But Hesse is preparing for war against his telecom rivals, with an arsenal packed with "nukes" - Hesse-speak for anything that has the potential to disrupt the status quo in wireless. One possibility under consideration: flat-rate pricing for unlimited voice calls.
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By DAVID TWIDDY    KANSAS CITY, Mo.  -- Sprint Corp...
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Clinton lends her campaign $5 million as rival Barack Obama outraised her ... McCain leads GOP delegate count for Super Tuesday results while Clinton is ahead for Democrats ... Obama says he's Clinton-tested and toughened for fall campaign ... McCain looks to appease conservatives while Huckabee, Romney press on ... Michigan congressmen Dingell, Kildee endorse Clinton
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McCain promises to work with Democrats if he wins GOP nomination, presidency ... Clinton revisits law school days and child advocacy work ... Romney campaigns coast-to-coast on way to Super Tuesday finish line
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Sprint's planned combination with  rival wireless carrier Nextel Communications Inc. will get a  thorough review by the Federal Communications Commission, the  agency's chairman said on Wednesday.
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Sprint, the No. 3 US mobile- phone company, and Nextel Communications are in early talks about a possible merger, people familiar with the matter said.
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Romney tries to motivate high schoolers amid final day on Michigan stump ... Huckabee tells Mich. supporters he understands struggles of working-class people ... McCain says he would retool job training programs as president ... Racially tinged disputes heat up between Clinton and Obama
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The candidates from both parties were trying on Friday to generate momentum for policies designed to keep the country from sinking into recession.
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Presidential hopefuls employ divergent strategies aimed at winning the most delegates on Feb 5.