Wireless

(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET)

Apple iPhone aside, it's pretty safe to say that there hasn't been so much hype and anticipation over an upcoming smartphone as the Palm Pre. The tech community was all abuzz on Tuesday when Sprint and Palm finally announced the pricing and release date, but could there already be rough waters ahead?

Speaking at an investor conference on Tuesday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse warned of likely Pre shortages:

"We don't intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while. We won't be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time."

There aren't any concrete numbers as to how many units will be available, but some sites like Precentral.net are estimating that it may be around 375,000, which will be distributed nationwide to Sprint, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Walmart stores. Now, I'm not the best with numbers but even I can tell that's not a lot of phones to spread around.

What's worse? Sprint and Palm may be doing this on purpose. In a report by Bloomberg, some analysts say the companies may limit the supply to make the Pre look more appealing to potential customers. Now, there's no confirmation of this but if true, I have to agree with fellow blogger Don Reisinger in saying that this is just wrong. This is such a pivotal moment for both Sprint and Palm that 1) you would think they'd want to sell as many phones as possible and 2) you don't want to piss off your customers.

We'll see how it all plays out when the smartphone goes on sale on June 6, but let's hope there's plenty of Pre love for everyone. Out of curiosity, does anyone plan on lining up early to get the Palm Pre on opening day?

(Source: PCMag.com)

Sprint Nextel's CEO is getting a big bonus for 2008, despite the fact that the beleaguered cell phone operator is still losing customers.

Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse

(Credit: Sprint Nextel)

A proxy filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission filed this week shows that CEO Dan Hesse will receive a bonus of $2.6 million for 2008, which is about 30 percent higher than his targeted payout, according to The Wall Street Journal. Hesse's total compensation package is valued at $15.5 million, including a base salary of $1.2 million and equity grants.

The proxy also indicates that Hesse received additional corporate perks valued at around $288,000, including a $173,801 contribution to his 401(k); $91,462 for security; and $21,965 for other expenses that included use of the corporate jet.

Hesse also has a pretty nice golden parachute that guarantees him about $10.1 million if he is terminated without cause. And if the company is bought and he is booted as CEO, Hesse stands to gain $10.7 million, according to the filing.

Hesse's hefty bonus and compensation package come at a time when Sprint is unprofitable and still losing customers. For 2008, the company reported a net loss of $2.8 billion and a loss of some 4.6 million customers.

Hesse, 55, took over as CEO at the end of 2007 after the company forced out its previous CEO. From the start, Hesse has had an uphill battle. The company has steadily been losing customers as subscribers complain of poor service. And it faced one of the worst reputations for customer service in the cell phone industry.

Hesse has concentrated a lot of time, effort, and money to improving the company's customer care and public image. He has even appeared as the star in several Sprint commercials as the company tries to reshape its image.

A Sprint spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that Sprint has seen some improvements under Hesse. Some of these improvements include increased customer call resolution, $1 billion in cost cutting, and renegotiated credit agreements that will provide Sprint more financial flexibility.

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.