Sprint Xohm Launch Officially Delayed

When Sprint's status was lowered to 'junk' by various organizations, it makes procuring financing much harder and more expensive.

Too bad Sprint is not an investment bank. If they were, they could get some help from the Fed.

Before we have serious competition in wireless? When will I be able to have wireless data and a reasonable amount of voice minutes for $50 a month?

Yeah - JP Morgan did well off Bear Stearns with that one... at our expense, no less. $30/share, bought for $2/share

10 dollars =). Wonder how that sat with the stockholders (sarcasm). A 20 dollar loss in price. Amazing how this administration has screwed things up. 5 trillion deficit, a worthless dollar, etc etc.

As for sprint, they need to stop thinking in 20 directions. That's this company's major problem. They can't get idea one working flawlessly but decide to go onto idea 2 anyway. Seriously guys, fix your customer support and billing issues. This way customers won't be leaving in droves. Once that's resolved, THEN BUILD OUT. However, you first must focus on keeping your company alive and customers staying. You won't be building out for anyone if EVERYONE leaves.

Beg more money from intel... Their the ones pushing for the technology. I mean common. They want something but no one but Sprint is willing to invest...

I didn't think the cable co deals would fall through anyway. Its kinda upsetting to see a good technology go down the drain... but then again I wouldn't fund sprint either.

That's actually a good question, given Intel has spent so much on hardware and proclaimed WiMax the "greatest invention since the Internet itself..."

What's another billion between friends?

I tend to agree with you on that point.

It seems like a pretty crucial piece of the equation... I thought cell phone companies provided their own lines to the cell towers, you mean they are renting space from other companies? You'd think they'd save a lot of money over time if they ran the lines themselves.

The fact that they didn't run any lines in advance shows they weren't so confident about rolling this out. I suppose its fair to wait for the financing, but they probably should have gotten that first before making any plans at all.

I feel that this is the only hope for a near-future launch.

Most cell companies dont own the physical plant in the ground, so they need to purchase these from a LEC/CLEC/ISP, etc. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that one "not yet 3G" GSM provider has been purchasing a lot of ethernet circuits from a company out to their cell towers....

doesn't start with a "T" does it?

I agree with that too. Sprint just goes all out on one idea, then switches to another. You would think at least they would have a backup plan for this or at least had the sense to know that something like this was going to happen.

There is competition- just not price competition.

I personally like Sprint's attempts at deploying new products ahead of others, and being more agressive at it and pricing as well. Unfortunately, they just haven't been always very successful at it.

Sprint does need to come up with a solid business plan and follow through instead of backing out of various projects. The Sprint/Nextel merger has NOT been a smooth ride just like this Xohm launch project. This financing problem is another example of poor business planning by Sprint.

Bell Canada and Rogers rolled out their nation-wide WiMax network (up to 3mbit/s per customer) over two years ago, in March 2006. Why is it so hard for Sprint to deploy what Canada deployed years ago?

So what happened to that all IP network huh? How about that trash. Well thanks for letting everyone know now that you don't have the capacity to even operate the network you so badly been boasting.

*Michieru puts his cover on and walks the other way*

So much for competition, so much for everything else, it was all just a waste of time after all. I guess we never will really have a choice other than GSM technology and what they feed us. This news is more catastrophic than the first quarter results.

Whatever.

Jeez, they didn't CANCEL the entire project, it's just delayed. If you expected a company in as poor of shape as Sprint to make their original deadlines then you were a little too optimistic.

I would say you are headed in the "right direction" with that.

I currently have sprint service. I know you are gonna say,,, ohh sorry. However, I have not had any problems. The current data rates are awesome for where I live. Oklahoma City. The Customer service is being worked on as I type this message. My wife is a supervisor with them here at the call center, LOTS of Changes and people that don't care gettin the axe.

You mean providing wireless Internet will require backhaul connections? Whatever they are paying these executives it's too much!

And......I thought one of the strengths of WiMAX was it's ability to provide long distance high bandwidth backhaul connections as well.

I think they are just making excuses business issues rather than technical issues because these people can't be that stupid.

I did not expect them to meet the deadline, but I did not expect an issue such as capacity or backhaul to be their problem. That's something you need to analyze before you even decide to get into a project like this.

Sprint no longer has their foot on the ground either or so it seems. Something good better come soon, or else it will just be to late to do any major change and the amount of damage will simply overshadow any little success they had.

Rumor has it, Sprint was trying to get away from using the likes of VZ or AT&T for that last mile copper to a tower. I think there is a company being used to set up microwave systems to get away from that access need. »www.fibertower.com/corp/ ··· ex.shtml comes to mind. I think Sprint, is doing the right thing to survive.

En,

It's one thing to take initiative and be aggressive. It's another to make unwise financial investments. With the first, you have your ducks in a row, and have no problems expanding. Then, if issues arrive, you are not stretched too thin to find solutions. Unfortunately, sprint falls into the second category. They have too many problems on their plate, and keep adding more. Eventually, something has to give. The plate can only hold so much before it breaks. Hence, Sprint needs to focus on its core issues first. 1) Technical Support 2) Billing 3) Customer Service (which goes hand in hand with one and two). Once these are resolved and you see customer satisfaction, then build out. Otherwise, you're left losing money and pissing away more on expansions that yield little additional benefits.

Yup - they have no money to spend, and are bleeding customers. With their status as junk, they can not afford to expand until they fix their current issues and retain / expand their customer base. The only benefit to expansion would be if they sold off the expanded business, and this is not the time to do it, as it has no customer base yet.

Exactly. It's like building a new company and then hoping to profit from it immediately. Rarely does that happen. The same with new services. It takes time for it to acquire value. In the mean time, its considered a loss. Sprint can't afford any more losses at this point.

Even their former executives like say, Gary Forsee, for instance. 85K/month for life in retirement bennies alone!

Gawd, it's good to be king even when your not king anymore!