Sprint's archive
Ending Handset Exclusivity Won’t Mean a Phone That Can Roam
FCC acting chairman Michael Copps said yesterday afternoon that the agency would investigate exclusivity deals between carriers and handset makers, and “take action” if they were found to cause harm to consumers. While the largest cellular carriers are protesting the probe, consumer advocates are thrilled. However with two of the four largest U.S. […]
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Telecom’s Titanic Shift: How The Mighty Have Fallen
For past few years I have been saying that we are amidst a titanic shift in the telecom landscape, with the center of gravity is moving away from the U.S., leading to the rise of new telecom giants which in turn is fueling the rise of upstart equipment makers such as Huawei and ZTE Corp. […]
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Sen. Kerry Wants Wants His iPhone Unlocked
The iPhone has sure brought a lot of whiners out of the woodwork. Today Sen. John Kerry joined them by publishing a blog post on the Save The Internet blog arguing against exclusivity of certain phones on some wireless networks. Yesterday, Kerry sent a letter to the FCC in preparation for hearings scheduled tomorrow that […]
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Will Sprint Thwart Sling Media’s 3G Palm Pre App Plans?
Sling Media is developing a version of its SlingPlayer application, which allows users to access TV content from their mobile phones, for the Palm Pre that would work on both on Wi-Fi and 3G. But Sling’s hopes for 3G support could be dashed by the Pre’s mobile carrier, Sprint, which is currently locked in […]
Despite the iPhone, It’s Still a 2G World
As many in the U.S. rush to snap up the Palm Pre that runs on Sprint’s 3G network or the new iPhone 3G S coming on June 19, it may be hard to realize that we’re still living in a world where most people aren’t on third-generation wireless networks. A research report out yesterday […]
Qwest Backs Off Sale of Its Long-Distance Network
Qwest may be desperately looking for a way to ignite growth in the face of its stagnating land-line business, but it’s not yet desperate enough to accept a too-low offer for its long-distance network. The company said today that it’s completed the strategic review of its long-distance network — and that it’s keeping those cables. […]
7 Gadgets That Prove the Cell Network Isn’t Just for Phones
After writing extensively about how cell phone providers want to boost their business by offering wireless access for emerging devices, such as electric meters or e-readers, I decided to check with the nation’s four largest carriers to see what they consider to be some of the most interesting devices that run on their networks. I […]
Countdown to Palm Pre: My Super-Quick Hands-On Review
The buzz around the much-awaited Palm Pre has started. The make-or-break device that will define the destiny of the iconic handheld maker will hit the market later this week. For Sprint, the beleaguered mobile carrier, it is a highly anticipated device that will hopefully bring out big-spending smartphone buyers. I have been less than sanguine […]
Amazon Kindles Good For Telcos, Bad for ARPU
Devices like Amazon’s Kindle e-reader are pioneering a business model that will help carriers grow their subscriptions at the expense of annual revenue per user, according to a report out today from Nielsen. The audience tracking company also follows wireless subscriptions and, in its analysis of first-quarter data, noted that alternative sources of revenue […]
Sprint Sets June 6 for Palm Pre Launch
Sprint will start selling the much-awaited Palm Pre on June 6, the embattled carrier said today. The phone, which onlookers expect could determine Sprint’s fate, will cost $199.99 after a $100 rebate. Best Buy, RadioShack and certain Wal-Mart stores will sell the Pre, along with Sprint’s online store. Buyers will also need to purchase an Everything […]
How ISPs Can Survive Becoming Dumb Pipes
As it becomes ever easier to get both video and voice over a broadband connection, telecommunications providers increasingly appear to have a one-way ticket to commodity status as a dumb pipe. Consolidation of services on the part of consumers alone has the potential to reduce a triple-play bundle that costs more than $100 and reduce […]
Wireless Scorecard, We Heart Data Edition
It’s been a rough first three months of the year for the economy, but while overall subscriber growth at wireless carriers stayed pretty stable, wireless data revenue continued to climb. AT&T’s reliance on the iPhone was once again made clear, as was Sprint’s difficulty holding onto postpaid subscribers (although thanks to its $50 unlimited […]
BT Adds Mobile Broadband to Its Consumer Bundles
BT Group introduced packages earlier this week that add mobile broadband to home services such as voice, web and video that it provides to customers. By coming out with a combined mobile and fixed broadband package, it’s mirroring a trial plan offered by AT&T and recognizing that mobile broadband can be a good complement to […]
4G Coming to Sweden: 2 Carriers Team Up to Deploy LTE by 2010
Telenor Sweden and Tele2 Sweden said today they will share spectrum and build a joint Long Term Evolution 4G network in Sweden with an eye to having it up and running by the end of 2010. The timing means Sweden will get LTE around the same time Verizon Wireless deploys it in the U.S. and […]
Carriers Should Accept That Openness Can Be Good for Them
T-Mobile is trying to work with the Federal Communications Commission to cut in half the number of days a land-line carrier has to transfer a phone number to a cell phone, according to the New York Times. This cracks me up as number portability was once the bane of the cellular operators; they were among […]
LBS Startups to Keep on Your Map
Now that GPS chips are becoming must-have hardware on cell phones, location-based services for mobile devices have finally arrived. They’re even infiltrating the desktop. So it’s time to start sifting through the location-aware company pitches, from newly launched apps to platforms (there’s always a few platforms). We’ve all heard about Google’s Latitude and Loopt, but […]
Dell to Get Into the Carrier Game?
A Japanese newspaper reported that Dell plans to resell mobile data airtime from NTTDoCoMo along with its notebooks, according to TechRadar. The idea of a PC maker as an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) may be more appealing to device makers than the current practice of carriers subsidizing portable PCs, because it gives the PC […]
When It Comes to 3G, Better, Not Big, Matters
In a story outlining the challenges faced by Palm’s Pre, The New York Times reports:
“David Owens, a Sprint marketing executive, said that he understood that ‘consumers don’t perceive Sprint as having the best network,’ but that if they were to ‘look at actual network performance, there’s a gap between perception and reality.’ He said that […]
MetroPCS Gets BlackBerry Curve
MetroPCS said today it will launch the BlackBerry Curve 8330 (not Om’s latest handset crush) in several markets, including Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, with advance pay plans that range from $30 to $60 a month. The BlackBerry is the carrier’s first smart phone.
Last week, MetroPCS COO Tom Keys told us […]
Sprint Evaluating LTE Equipment
Sources in the telecommunications world have been telling me that Sprint is testing Long Term Evolution, or LTE, equipment, which seems a bit odd given Sprint’s cheerleading for WiMAX and 51 percent stake in Clearwire, which is building out a nationwide WiMAX network. I asked Sprint if it was evaluating LTE equipment, and spokesman John […]
Clearwire Shouldn’t Count on Stimulus
Clearwire announced a slightly scaled back rollout of its WiMAX network last Thursday, but analysts still believe the wireless operator will have to stretch itself to pay for its nationwide network. Chris King, a analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, thinks Clearwire will need $2 billion to $4 billion more than it has disclosed to build out […]
Embarq Files for Universal Femtocell Patent
An alert reader sent me a link to a patent filed yesterday by Embarq, the wireline carrier currently trying to merge with CenturyTel. The patent is for a “universal femto cell,” and the gist of the patent is to create a femtocell that will work with any carrier. A femtocell is like a mini […]
The GigaOM Interview: MetroPCS COO Tom Keys
The broken economy, consumer acceptance of unlimited wireless plans and a series of business decisions have positioned MetroPCS for growth, according to the company’s COO, Tom Keys. In this GigaOM interview, Keys talks about the business opportunity for MetroPCS, and its plans to transition to the LTE fourth generation wireless network.
Nokia Plans LTE Devices for 2010
A Nokia executive said today that the company has committed to LTE as its preferred network for devices, and plans to launch devices for those networks in 2010. James Harper, senior manager of technology marketing at Nokia, speaking at a PCCA meeting held in Grapevine, Texas, declined to detail what type of devices the handset […]
Wireless Scorecard, Recession Edition
The financial results are in, so in order to give you guys an idea of how the major U.S. carriers are doing, we’ve gathered together the relevant data from their fourth-quarter wireless results and laid them out below. It’s looking like cheap is chic and the iPhone is keeping AT&T on a winning streak […]
MetroPCS Grows As Economy Shrinks
Prepaid mobile phone provider MetroPCS today reported profits of $14.6 million for the fourth quarter on sales of $723.6 million. The carrier didn’t meet Wall Street earnings expectations after writing down more than $90 million in auction rate securities, but it has added a significant number of new subscribers thanks to its expansion into new […]
Sprint Loses Less Money, More Subscribers
Sprint today reported a loss of $1.62 billion, which looks much better than the nearly $30 billion loss it reported a year ago at this time, thanks to its writedown of Nextel. However, the carrier is still struggling with subscriber losses (it plans to cut 8,000 jobs), and it’s unclear if the launch of the […]
Apple Employees Drink the Kool-Aid; Motorola’s Don’t
In a twist on customer satisfaction surveys, Glassdoor, an online site that tracks employee satisfaction, has asked employees at mobile handset makers and carriers what they think of the executive they work for and the products and services their workplaces offer. The folks at Apple are cultishly loyal to CEO Steve Jobs, giving him a […]
Mobile Broadband: It’s Still Gonna Cost You
As the PC and communications industries converge, among the biggest impediments to true interactive mobile computing are the carriers’ business models. The current prices and plans for mobile broadband access are expensive and inflexible. If the technology and communications industries want consumers to buy (and use the web via) laptops, mobile Internet devices and/or some […]
Verizon Offers Up More Prepaid Plans
Verizon Wireless today announced additions to its prepaid phone plans that seem a bit rich compared to prepaid plans already offered by Sprint’s Boost Mobile, Metro PCS and Leap Wireless. Those plans cost $40 to $50 a month, while Verizon’s high-end plan costs subscribers $4 a day for unlimited voice and 1 cent texts. At […]
Our Readers Take on the LTE v. WiMAX Debate
When I wrote last week about Sprint giving up control of its 4G future, my post engendered a lively debate among some of our commenters about the technical merits of LTE and WiMAX. Since most of our readers aren’t planning a network buildout, they may have skimmed over the arguments, but buried amidst the talk […]
With Hub, Verizon Dresses Up Femtocells
Today, Verizon Wireless unveiled more details about its Verizon Hub, a femtocell device that goes beyond boosting reception and acts as some kind of home command center. Most femtocells have been advertised as tiny cell towers for the home, used to improve cellular reception indoors, and they offer a way for carriers to get traffic […]
Sprint’s Dumb Pipe Dream
When Sprint signed away its WiMAX spectrum to Clearwire in exchange for 51 percent of the company, and the promise of a nationwide 4G network, it also signed away control of its future. It no longer controls its next generation network — instead it has handed over its spectrum to potential cable and wireless competitors […]
Has the U.S. Wireless Data Boom Stalled?
While the U.S. wireless industry has been ravaged by brutal price wars when it comes to plain-vanilla voice minutes, carriers big and small have managed to turn in profits and show hefty growth, thanks to growing demand for wireless data services. In the fourth quarter, Verizon and AT&T raked in about $6 billion just on […]
Where’s the Google Phone Bump?
T-Mobile said today that it had 32.8 million customers as of the end of the fourth quarter after adding 621,000 more during the three-month period. That’s a 35 percent drop in net adds from the same three-month period in 2007 and 49,000 less than T-Mobile added in the third quarter of 2008. It’s also far less […]
Verizon Still Pushing for LTE in 2010
On its earnings conference call today, Verizon says it still hopes to have LTE commercially available by the first half of 2010. Verizon President and COO Denny Strigl gave the time frame, and didn’t indicate that the four-month delay in accessing the 700 MHz spectrum occupied by analog television signals would cause the carrier […]
LBS: A Dream Continually Deferred
The Wall Street Journal this morning had a short article pointing out the somewhat obvious reasons why location-based services on cell phones are still not mainstream. It also helpfully pointed out that carriers were working on it. To recap, LBS services need three main things: a way to get location (which we have thanks to GPS chips and even the ability to triangulate using Wi-Fi networks), software that can make sense of geographic information and do something with it (which are out), and cooperation between handset makers and carriers to enable developers to access such services easily.
It’s the cooperation piece that fails, but the article points to several companies such as Nokia, uLocate’s Where application and SkyHook Wireless that are attempting to bridge that gap by offering a platform that will sit between carriers and smaller developers. For example, uLocate has signed a deal with Sprint to act as the LBS platform for its WiMAX network. Smaller developers can sign on through Where and get access to WiMAX subscribers without worrying about working with Sprint or getting the location information form a provider. I suppose since we’ve waited this long for LBS, most of us can wait a little longer.
image courtesy of Where
FCC Voted Today too
The FCC voted today too. They took the Inter-Carrier Compensation and USF off the agenda, much to Martin’s dismay.
“Federal regulators have approved a plan to open up unused, unlicensed portions of the television airwaves known as “white spaces” to deliver wireless broadband service.” [Y! news] [fcc.gov]
FCC approved, with conditions, the mergers of Sprint-Nextel/Clearwire and Alltel-Verizon. [fcc.gov]
FCC opened an investigation into the pricing policies of major cable operators and Verizon. “The agency wants to ensure the companies’ customers are getting treated fairly, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in an interview with The Associated Press.” [Y! news]
Tags: alltel, clearwire, fcc, inter-carrier compensation, mergers, sprint, usf, vzw
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Sep 28, 2008
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