rodrod5
join:2001-02-28
Houston, TX
2 edits | TimeWarner huh
maybe they could put some AOL co-branding on it and really flush it down the toilet
maybe it could just dump you after a few minutes of non-use 
First Sprint ION and now this....Sprint sure has a way of spending a ton of money on something then dumping it suddenly
maybe (aol)TimeWarner is a good partner  |
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VansHSI
join:2005-01-29
America | Fluff
Partners yes... but spinoff?
And clearwire brings so little money to the table Sprint would more likely just buy them.
But partners in helping out on the build out of Wimax could be a possibility. |
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inteller
Sociopaths always win.
join:2003-12-08
Tulsa, OK | Ion.
Sprint ION was way ahead of its time. It only failed because people didn't completely understand what it could do. |
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rodrod5
join:2001-02-28
Houston, TX | I still wish I had my ION
I keep the hub just in case |
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DaveNJ
No Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey
 ·Comcast
·Patriot Media
| I wanted sprint IOn but was not in a service area, what gets me about Sprint, is they dont do things to save money. When Sprint merged with Nextel, they should have converted to GSM/3G, which has better economies of scale. If sprint could bring back ION, and integrate it with a cell phone, and use GSM. Sprint might have a chance at 3rd place. |
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ropeguru
Premium
join:2001-01-25
Bridgeport, WV
clubs:
 ·VOIPo
| Maybe...
They should have kept trials going with the technology Nextel had started using. Seems to me it had excellent speeds and, most importantly, low latencies. But, no, they had to nix it immediately because it was Nextel's project and what Sprint already had in the works was apparently sooooo much better. 
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FWD#: 223611 |
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BillRoland
Premium
join:2001-01-21
Ocala, FL
clubs:
·Cox HSI
| Reality is setting in
Sprint is a company that is in trouble. They have entirely too many irons in the fire and they don't really know what to do with any of them. They still don't have a clue how to run the iDEN network nor how to deal with the iDEN customer base. They continue to expend tons of resources on deploying EVDO (which makes little sense to me if you tell everyone you're going to be building out a WiMAX network next year that is going to obsolete your EVDO network), there is still no clear marketing message, and on and on. Investors are right to be worried, this is a company that has only proved one thing: it cannot execute on anything. I know I'll get bashed by the Sprint faithful, but please understand I'm just telling you the facts of life. I have been saying for quite a while now that Sprint WiMAX wasn't going to materialize, or, at least not as it was being presented, so I'm not surprised to see these headlines starting to show up.
When you're only highlight in quarterly results is that your prepaid unit is growing like gangbusters, you've got a problem.
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"Don't steal. The government hates competition." |
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Fox McCloud
Crazy like a fox.
join:2006-07-23
 ·Embarq
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| reply to inteller
Re: Ion.
said by inteller  :Sprint ION was way ahead of its time. It only failed because people didn't completely understand what it could do. I hate to be the idiot here, but what, exactly was Sprint ION?
Yeah, I too can't see Clearwire being a very good investor; as someone else said, most likely Sprint will just purchase them some day (can you say WiMAX Monopoly? :P).
Anyway, maybe they'll try to get Embarq to fund them; hey, Sprint screwed over their landline division once before... |
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CMoore2004
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Jonesville, MI | reply to DaveNJ
Ummm, no. |
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CMoore2004
Premium
join:2003-02-06
Jonesville, MI | reply to BillRoland
Re: Reality is setting in
The EVDO will likely still be the high-speed technology in phones. I'm not expecting to see my phone with WiMax capabilities. |
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Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
| reply to rodrod5
Re: TimeWarner huh
said by rodrod5 :First Sprint ION and now this....Sprint sure has a way of spending a ton of money on something then dumping it suddenly Sadly, Sprint is yet another company that could really go places if not for ignorant shareholders. I've gotten to know quite a few stock traders recently. All of them buy and sell based on matters that require expert knowledge. Not one of them possess any expert knowledge of the technology businesses that they, unfortunately, own and control.
It must really suck to be a brilliant top executive at Sprint, who is poised to capture an entire market through forward thinking, only to get cut off at the last second by Nervous Nellie Luddites whose only interest is making money fast. People who honestly believe that the fax machine is high-tech have no business in corporate governance. |
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bmn
? ? ?
Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
| Most investors are stupid...
The Sprint management needs to realize that most investors, like most of the population, are idiots. They want to invest their $100 or $1000 in the company, get their quick returns, and be done with it. They don't want to see ANY downward pulls on the stock due to things like capital expenditures because most of them aren't in it for the long term. Sprint need to pull a Verizon to tell the investors to simply f*ck off since most of them don't even know why WiMax is perfect for Sprint.
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Prove it... |
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Gilitar
join:2000-11-20
Mobile, AL | reply to BillRoland
Re: Reality is setting in
You are exactly right. Watch for Sprint to be gobbled up by Time Warner or Comcast when the stock goes low enough. |
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Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
| reply to inteller
Re: Ion.
said by inteller :Sprint ION was way ahead of its time. It only failed because people didn't completely understand what it could do. Bull.
I heard the news of Sprint ION while I was in a backwater town (as far as Internet access goes) in Arkansas, and immediately rushed to place my order. At the time I had a beautiful line of sight path to their antenna atop the Sears Tower. I thought that I was set.
I have never heard so many excuses why the installer allegedly couldn't set me up. My plan was to locate my antenna on the inside of a window with the great view. "No that won't work" they said. Bull. The STL antenna for one of the TV stations that I worked for was mounted behind a window inside of the Sears Tower, no less! When I secured permission for roof access, they balked again, citing liability issues, with the potential for high winds to tear loose their cabling. Never mind the fact that the existing MATV cabling had been there for decades with no such problems.
The bottom line is that Sprint, or whoever Sprint hired to do the installations, was absolutely determined to prevent the deployment of this product. After three months of bogus excuses for not signing me up, they nailed the lid on their own coffin by claiming that I "was too late", that they had saturated the market already. When I pointed out that I was literally the first person in this market to apply for service, they had no reply. Later on Sprint announced that ION service was discontinued.
Imagine my surprise when, years later I befriended a satisfied ION customer whose allegedly "terminated" ION service was still going strong, with no end in sight.
I'm reminded of a TV commercial that used a line "we didn't plan to fail; we just failed to plan." Well somebody at Sprint is hard at work, planning on making Sprint fail. I wish that someone would find the jackass and fire him. |
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Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
| reply to Fox McCloud
Sprint ION is a technically successful wireless Internet delivery system that has been around for a half-dozen years. It works, no doubt about it. It's simpler and easier to deploy than Canopy, and a lot less costly. It could have been a raging success if not for the people within the Sprint organization who are determined to keep the company from making big money. |
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Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
1 edit | reply to DaveNJ
said by DaveNJ :When Sprint merged with Nextel, they should have converted to GSM/3G, which has better economies of scale. Wait a minute. Are you seriously suggesting that Sprint throw away its far superior EV-DO equipment to buy GSM? That means replacing their entire infrastructure, and force all of their customers to buy new equipment, whether they want to or not? That would most certainly kill Sprint for good.
What is it about Sprint that attracts you "plan to fail" types?
EDIT: Precisely what "economies of scale"??? |
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Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
| reply to ropeguru
Re: Maybe...
said by ropeguru :They should have kept trials going with the technology Nextel had started using. What technology? That's news to me!
Seems to me it had excellent speeds and, most importantly, low latencies. Hold on, you just said that that it was only in the testing stage. How would you know how well it would work? In contrast, Sprint's EV-DO is here, now, in production. And it works very well. WTF???
But, no, they had to nix it immediately because it was Nextel's project and what Sprint already had in the works was apparently sooooo much better. |
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ropeguru
Premium
join:2001-01-25
Bridgeport, WV
clubs:
·VOIPo
| Here is a link to what Nextel was testing so you know what I am talking about:
»www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/19···oadband/
And here is an article from the time here on DSLR explaining speeds and the lower latency:
»3G Killer?
While I was referring to Sprint's plans to offer WiMax, of which Sprint's current EV-DO has NOTHING to do with, you had to bring up something irrelavent. Additionally you are mixing the three technologies (OFDM, EV-DO, and WiMax) into this post. While I agree that EV-DO should stay as it is tested and proven, by now, OFDM would have been tested and ether proven or rejected even though WiMax hasn't hardly been looked at.
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FWD#: 223611 |
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calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| Confirmation of worst fears....
This reluctance to move into new technologies just proves one of the worst fears of the Sprint/Nextel merger--that the telco heads from Sprint would eventually kill the entrepreneurial spirit of Nextel.
Face it--Nextel was scrappy, having cobbled together a viable cellular service alternative (back in the day when there were only two cellular carriers in any market) out of taxicab and business dispatch frequencies. Sprint, on the other hand, was run by a bunch of guys with wireline telco backgrounds who fell into the cellular business.
The toast is almost done. Next.
calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! |
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Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
| reply to BillRoland
Re: Reality is setting in
said by BillRoland :They (Sprint) still don't have a clue how to run the iDEN network nor how to deal with the iDEN customer base. Hey. I'll give Nextel props for finding an innovative way to repurpose land mobile frequencies in order to compete with the fledgling AMPS cellular industry. That was a bold move. But let's face reality. Times have changed.
IDEN is a last-ditch effort by Motorola to maintain Nextel as a cash cow. The technology is proprietary, non-interoperable and neither fish nor fowl. It combines all of the worst liabilities of non-cellular mobile telephony, TDMA and GSM, while offering absolutely no benefit whatsoever from either. (What good is a CIM when you must purchase your phone from a single vendor?) It should go away, and give those frequencies back to the land mobile market that needs them badly.
They continue to expend tons of resources on deploying EVDO (which makes little sense to me if you tell everyone you're going to be building out a WiMAX network next year that is going to obsolete your EVDO network) Hold on there, chief. EV-DO has only recently begun to cover major metropolitan areas. Suburban and rural customers are still stuck with 1xRTT. Do you really think that WiMAX is going to just magically appear overnight, all debugged and ready for service? If so, you've been snorting too much WiMAX pixie dust.
The fact of the matter is that EV-DO will still play a very important role in Sprint's mobile data services during the decade or so that it will realistically take to build out a WiMAX infrastructure. Let's not forget that, unlike EV-DO, WiMAX has yet to prove itself in the real world.
Investors are right to be worried, this is a company that has only proved one thing: it cannot execute on anything. I know I'll get bashed by the Sprint faithful, but please understand I'm just telling you the facts of life. One of those facts of life that you have so conveniently glossed over is that it's the investors who control every publicly-held company. Maybe if Sprint's shareholders stopped pretending that they're venture capitalists (yes, I noticed the spin--"investors"), and let the professionals do what they're supposed to do, there would be no cause for concern. As it stands, their only cause for worry is the spoiled fruits of their own meddling.
I have been saying for quite a while now that Sprint WiMAX wasn't going to materialize, or, at least not as it was being presented, so I'm not surprised to see these headlines starting to show up. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it's precisely that kind of defeatist mindset perpetrated by clueless shareholders that has put Sprint in jeopardy. What I can't figure out is why so-called "investors" are so determined to lose their investments. I guess this is one case where ego has overpowered greed. |
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