Devices, 4G helping Sprint CEO lead comeback?
You might recognize Sprint CEO Dan Hesse from those black-and-white commercials. When I met with him last week at a hotel bar in Oakland, Calif., two women at the next table certainly did. They treated him like a celebrity.
I wouldn't go that far, but he does appear to have a good handle on the mobile industry and what Sprint--the No. 3 cell phone service provider behind AT&T and Verizon--needs to do. And he knows more than a little something about phone companies, having spent 23 years at AT&T, including a stint as CEO of AT&T Wireless Services.
It's too early to know for sure, but it seems as if Hesse could be Sprint's comeback kid.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, as seen in the company's much-played black-and-white commercial.
(Credit: Sprint)I started the conversation on a high note by asking him about the recently announced Palm Pre smartphone, which will be available exclusively from Sprint when it's released later this year. Not surprisingly, Hesse was "extremely enthused" about the phone, which won CNET's "Best of CES 2009" award and high initial praise from me and many other journalists.
While devices might attract customers, the real value of a cell phone company is the speed, reliability, and footprint of its network. As a Sprint customer, I can testify that it's pretty good. No cellular network is perfect, and reception always varies by location. But with my own Sprint phone and others I've tested, I've had relatively few dropped calls on Sprint, compared with Verizon and AT&T in the San Francisco Bay Area and on my frequent business trips, mostly to major U.S. cities.
Like Verizon's, most of Sprint's phones don't work overseas. But Sprint does offer a few "world" phones--including the BlackBerry 8830, which I tested--that have a GSM chip for global coverage. AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM technology in the States, which means that most of their handsets will work overseas, albeit at incredibly high roaming rates, unless you unlock them and buy a GSM SIM card in the country you're visiting.
4G Network uses WiMax
Hesse spent a big part of our interview talking about Sprint's 4G network, which is currently deployed in Baltimore and will soon launch in Portland, Ore. A national roll-out is scheduled over the next couple of years. The service uses WiMax technology, which is a high-speed broadband that can handle data with average speeds from 2 to 4 megabits per second.
I haven't been able to test the 4G service, but the Sprint 3G card I tried in my notebook worked well in most locations, though at speeds averaging about 800 kilobits per second.
AT&T and Verizon will roll out their 4G networks using a different technology, called LTE (long-term evolution). But so far, Sprint is ahead in the race to 4G.
What I find most interesting is not broadband in PCs, but broadband embedded in other devices. Hesse envisions embedded 4G broadband in lots of devices, including video and still cameras.
Amazon's Kindle already has an embedded Sprint 3G broadband chip so you can order books from anywhere in the United States without having to connect the Kindle to a PC or a Mac. The Kindle is a one-way street--you use it to download books--but eventually there will be plenty of devices with high-speed two-way communications.
Hesse envisions using a high-end camera to take a picture or a video in Paris and narrating it in real time, broadcasting live via the network. Of course, you can already do that with cameras that are built in to phones, but he's talking about phones embedded into cameras.
While he wouldn't give me any specifics about unannounced products, he said there are some great new devices in the pipeline. In 2009 and 2010, we can expect much higher-resolution screens, 3D graphics, higher-resolution cameras in traditional phones and, of course, 4G WiMax.
Based on our interview and what I'm seeing in the marketplace, we can also expect plenty of new relatively low-cost handsets with either virtual or physical QWERTY keyboard so that Sprint and its competitors can sell their data services.
Larry Magid is a technology journalist and an Internet safety advocate. He's been writing and speaking about Internet safety since he wrote Internet safety guide "Child Safety on the Information Highway" in 1994. He is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, founder of SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com, and a board member of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Larry's technology analysis and commentary can be heard on CBS News and CBS affiliates, and read on CBSNews.com. He also writes a personal-tech column for the San Jose Mercury News. You can e-mail Larry or follow him on Twitter @larrymagid. 
Goof. Clear's up and running in Portland, not "will soon launch in Portland". Just sayin'.
A lot of our input from the base model Instinct has been implemented into the updates. I have a much more stable phone now than when it first came out. This is my 3rd Instinct and so far, the problems with it since the last update have been few and far between, so I have to give them some credit.
I think one of the best things they have done in recent years is the Simply Everything Plan. With 2 levels, one where everything is unlimited for $99, and the other is 1500 anytime minutes with data/text/gps/etc. unlimited for $69. That definitely makes things easier. I went with the $99 SEP when I purchased my Instinct because now I can call forward my work/office line to my cell, that way if I am out of the office, I can still deal with people's problems at work.
While no phone is perfect, there are a lot of things with the Instinct that bothers me, but I keep on 'em to make changes over on the forums hoping that future updates will solve some of my gripes.
So as long they continue to support ALL their phones like they have done with the Instinct, and offer better plans than other carriers, they might just come out of this hole they have dug themselves into.
I left Verizon because (1) I hate being nickeled and dimed over every data feature, and (2) I hate being charged for downloads or premium SMS I never initiated.
I am really rooting for Sprint. If they can be first to 4G and have a bunch of high end HTC or Samsung Android devices with all the features I mentioned and with some good plans they're "comeback" will come full circle.
This Palm Pre talk has just made me realize how much my Sprint phone(and their lineup) sucks compare to competition. After a month of hearing about Pre and Sprint still not announcing the roll-out date I actually called them to get out of my contract yesterday. It was a strange month. At first i was happy to hear about something happening at Sprint and that new device just to be frustrated by the whole secrecy about the date. Second time Sprint has been playing games. Sprint not having Android phone was another letdown not long ago.
However, I feel the company's black-and-white commercials that feature him mostly target an older audience. I'm not certain that's the best idea given how many customers Sprint has lost.
The whole "Can you believe we calls these phones?" (I'm paraphrasing) and "Technology is only great when you know how to use it" doesn't speak to what I would think would be the target market.
Just a thought.
However, the ads from their competition is so horrible - E.g., The Verizon - can you hear me Ad (I feel like socking that guy whenever he's on TV), that the sprint ad really feels refreshing.
Anyway I cancelled that contract a year ago and I certainly am not going to go back just because they finally opened the Nextel line to new companies to bring in innovation. All of my friends have also since moved on now so I wouldn't have anyone to chirp now anyways.....
Up until now I still don't know why Motorola had never made a Razr phone with the Nextel chirp? They could have done that since like 2006 and it would have been the most advanced Motorola on Nextel back then.
- by nickv44 February 16, 2009 9:13 PM PST
- What a disappointing article (I mean
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- by larrymagid February 17, 2009 3:02 PM PST
- No disrespect taken. I was approaching the interview from the consumer perspective, not so much the Nextel business user perspective. You raise some interesting points. The one thing I do know is that a lot of people at Sprint regret the merger.
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(19 Comments)no disrespect). No questions regarding
what happened to q-chat? Also how Dan Hesse let ALL his Nextel customers
believe they were going to combine the two companies (Sprint and
Nextel) into one and offer us new phones with better features. Now
they realize they need to sell Nextel so he adds a few phones to an
old network thus hanging millions of good customers out to dry again?
They have been messing around with Nextel customers for years. They took a
good technology and flushed it in the toilet....and you had no
questions for him regarding Nextel or q-chat? What kind of fair report is this?