Early adopters don’t always win…or why can’t Sprint catch a break?

Sprint is the third player in the three major player mobile voice and data service market.  The majority of the company has focused on wireless services, especially after the acquisition several years ago of NexTel.  Sprint has a long legacy of leveraging technology, in practice and in marketing, to differentiate its services.  This included the “all-fiber-optic network pin-drop” and an early move with Sprint PCS (going to GSM while much of the rest of the industry milked AMPS technology).  Certainly, buying NexTel and its highly customer “sticky” push-to-talk (PTT) feature was in-line with Sprint’s overall approach.   How Sprint squandered NexTel might be the focus of a future article, but not here.

Continuing on the technology theme, specifically for wireless, Sprint apparently chose to attack the market with major two angles:

1. Stay on the leading-edge of handset technology.  Make deals to get the best smarthphones, etc.
2. Stay on the leading “G”.  That is, keep upgrading their wireless network for better performance.

For the first, they probably succeeded until the advent of the Apple iPhone.  Verizon Wireless had the best network and clunky phone, AT&T had marketing and iPhone, and T-Mobile had great pricing.

Keeping the network up-to-technology-par (not considering overall coverage, of which Sprint certainly trails at least Verizon Wireless) and without addressing the iDEN (PTT) mess, Sprint moved from GSM to the newer CDMA technology.  This probably provided better voice quality (debatable) but also 1xRTT data, helping to enable the Blackberry driven email and then Web-on-the-go.  Continuing this trend, Sprint upgraded, along with Verizon Wireless, to “3G” CDMA EDVO Rev. A.  With download speeds of 1Mbps+ and uploads 500Kbps+ this helped lead us into the mobile Web we have today, and helped drive AT&T and T-mobile to upgrade their networks to keep pace (competition is a wonderful thing).

Keeping with the technology differentiator angle, Sprint made a deal to roll-out 4G services using WiMAX technology in close association with ClearWire.  My experience with WiMAX involved my previous employer’s real-world tests using WiMAX technology.  Although the installations worked, the system performance was not exceptional, both in range and bandwidth delivered.

So, with the phone differentiator gone with Android and iPhone, Sprint went in head-first into unlimited data plans and its WiMAX-based 4G service.  All seemed to be well, until others jumped into the 4G ocean T-mobile with the “I’m gonna call HSPA+ 4G” and Verizon Wireless with LTE.

The problem is that, as my previous but albeit limited experience showed, WiMAX (or at least Sprint/ClearWire’s implementation) may not be up to the challenge.  The following link shows Sprint’s 4G performance in Austin, Texas.  With a max speed of 4Mbps down and 500Kbps up, it certainly did not wow: http://gigaom.com/2010/02/05/my-austin-wimax-experience-was-good-but-not-good-enough/

Another set of tests in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania are consistent: http://www.intomobile.com/2010/06/04/data-speed-showdown-sprint-4g-vs-t-mobile-hspa/.  However, what’s important to note is that T-Mobile HSPA+ was just as fast as Sprint’s WiMAX offering.

ClearWire and Sprint have invested billions in WiMAX and they are going to get creamed if the results of performance test like these and the next link continue to be representative of real-world WiMAX performance: http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/01/sprint-4g-wimax/.  In this set of tests, Verizon’s LTE creamed WiMAX in New York, New York with LTE achieving consistently 8+Mbps down and 4+Mbps up and WiMAX providing only 1+Mbps up and down.

Here is another set of data, which is consistent with the previous reports:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9207642/4G_shootout_Verizon_LTE_vs._Sprint_WiMax?taxonomyId=79&pageNumber=3.  Of particular note is that upload speeds could be as low as 41Kbps (that’s Kilo, man) compared to LTE’s 5Mbps+.

It is amazing how Sprint has tried to stay on the cutting edge with phones and WiMAX, but can’t seem to get a break.  They have already gone to cheap unlimited plans to help raise their subscriber numbers, but I don’t think that they are really making any headway.

With the potential of the lost investment in WiMAX equipment and the fact that they now have hundreds of millions of dollars tied-up with customer devices, what is Sprint to do now?  How does this affect ClearWire?