Don’t believe the worst of what you hear about Sprint. We think that Sprint could be well placed in the coming year to grow the business significantly. Next year will be all about one word for Sprint, and it isn’t even a real word. Of couse we mean WiMAX, and until the company explicitly says otherwise, we still believe they are on track to begin real world trials of the new service in a couple markets before the first half of 2008 is up. The timing could be just right.
WiMAX, first and foremost
See, WiMAX won’t be the fastest of the next-generation wireless technologies. In fact, some pundits are even branding WiMAX a 3G network, since its top mobile download speeds of about 15Mbps fall short of true 4G networks, like the LTE network for which Verizon Wireless just indicated a preference, which should be able to reach 100Mbps downloads. Still, WiMAX is an excellent fixed wireless standard, and even the real world speeds we’ll see from the company’s 15Mbps claims will be superior to AT&T’s current fastest U.S. network, through the next couple of incremental upgrades.
Customers are finally waking up to the idea of wireless internet access over a cellular network. Finally fed up with the lack of open Wi-Fi points, we think that customers, especially business users and college students, are going to want ubiquitous wireless internet at broadband speeds, and WiMAX could be the first technology on the market to offer that. Being first counts for plenty here, because new customers usually sign a long-term contract for a price break on hardware. So, if Sprint can hook customers early, they could gain some early recognition in a burgeoning market.
Forget Clearwire and read a book instead
Pertaining to Sprint’s WiMAX plans, the most significant development this past year was not the failure to work out a deal with Clearwire. Clearwire was supposed to handle the rural WiMAX market. While we would never sell short the benefits of long-range wireless internet to the rural market, certainly there are more potential customers in the urban markets on which Sprint themselves are focused. Once the base and network builds in the urban centers, of course there will be deals available to blanket the rural market.
The most significant development was the release of the Amazon Kindle device. While the E-book reader got mixed reviews, what we found interesting was the built-in EV-DO radio and the service that provides internet access. Basically an MVNO on Sprint’s network, Amazon’s Whispernet offers customers wireless access for the life of the device, we presume, without monthly fees. The cost is built into the service itself. We think this is going to be an important model for Sprint to follow, especially once WiMAX chips start showing up in more consumer electronics devices. Customers are used to a fluctuating monthly tab for cell phone service; and we can even imagine a monthly fee for wireless internet on our laptops. But when our TiVo has a WiMAX chip, we might not be as willing to cough up extra dough to Sprint for wireless access. When the fridge has a WiMAX chip (don’t laugh, we’ve seen one), we won’t want to worry about how many minutes it’s using monthly.
What’s new?
So, we have a new network coming from Sprint, and possibly a new payment model, unique to the mobile industry. Then, low and behold, Sprint joins the Google Open Handset Alliance. The so-called Android project could bring some interesting devices to Sprint, whose catalogue has been lacking some stellar devices. With the openness of the Alliance, we would be curious to see a combination of all these ideas. A WiMAX-enabled, pre-paid Google phone, perhaps running a VoIP app on Sprint’s IP network? The potential is there, let’s hope Sprint carries through on its plans.
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