Sprint Rescues Clearwire

Sprint has agreed to pay up to $1.6 billion to struggling wholesale wireless provider Clearwire over the next four years, ending the near-term threat that Clearwire could run out of cash to operate its business and possibly enter bankruptcy.

In large part, that is why Clearwire has made interest payments totaling $237 million on its first-priority, second-priority and exchangeable notes which were due Dec. 1, 2011, and which had been in danger of default by Clearwire.

The deal includes possible pre-payments for LTE services and potential equity investments. Sprint has committed to providing additional equity funding to Clearwire in the event of a future Clearwire equity offering. If Clearwire raises new equity between $400 million and $700 million, Sprint will participate in the offering on a pro rata basis up to $347 million, consistent with Sprint’s current voting interest of 49.6 percent on the same terms and conditions as other participating companies. 

The agreements modify prior wholesale pricing agreements and provide Sprint with unlimited access to Clearwire’s WiMAX network. Under the terms of the agreements, Sprint will pay Clearwire a total of $926 million, approximately two thirds of which will be paid in 2012, for unlimited 4G WiMAX retail services during 2012 and 2013, subject to certain conditions.

The agreements also establish long-term usage-based pricing for WiMAX services in 2014 and beyond. Sprint will have access to Clearwire’s WiMAX network through at least 2015.

Sprint plans to continue selling WiMAX devices with two-year contracts through at least 2012 and support those devices through the life of the contract.

In addition, the agreement provides Sprint competitive pricing for re-wholesaling by Sprint of WiMAX services to third parties as well as increased pricing flexibility for Clearwire’s own wholesale business.  

Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO says the deal “provides Sprint improved pricing, allows us to continue to provide WiMAX 4G services to our customers today and to new customers in the future and provides additional LTE capacity to help complement our ‘Network Vision’ strategy and meet our customers’ growing data demands.”  Sprint funds Clearwire

In October, Clearwire reported that it was discussing the possibility of skipping an interest payment on debt it owes. While the WiMax network isn’t the future of Sprint’s Long Term Evolution strategy, it’s essential, at least for the moment, for supporting millions of Sprint 4G customers.

As part of the deal, Clearwire agreed to keep its WiMax network operational until 2015, which will give both companies time to build out their own LTE high-speed network.

The financing from Sprint gives Clearwire $926 million for unlimited network use for 2012 through 2013. The remaining financing is a prepaid fee for Sprint to use Clearwire’s LTE network, which should be available by June 2013.

Some had speculated that Sprint might be better served to let Clearwire go into bankruptcy, then buy the assets. But that approach would not automatically allow Sprint to secure the spectrum Clearwire now uses. The latest infusion of capital gives Sprint a better bridge to its own LTE future, at the very least.

Verizon to double data amounts for 4G smart phones

Customers buying smart phones running on the Verizon Wireless Long Term Evolution 4G network will get double the data buckets for as long as they keep their level of service.

For example, someone who subscribes to the 2GB for $30 plan will receive 4GB instead. For $50 you can get 10GB instead of 5GB, and for $80 you can get 20GB instead of 10GB per month.

Existing customers (those who have upgraded their service or purchased a 4G smartphone within the last 14 days) will have to request the change. Verizon to double data amounts for 4G smart phones

Verizon Wireless apparently says the bigger data plans will stay in effect so long as users keep a smart phone plan.


The nice thing about a brand-new wireless network is that, at first, there aren't too many customers to clog up the pipes, allowing service providers to do these sorts of deals. 

Sprint Accelerates Network Vision

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says "Network Vision is coming along so well, we've accelerated from three to five years to just three years." Investors might be concerned about the timing of capital investment, as the acceleration means "we'll be spending more money sooner."

But Spring doesn't really have time to delay the full transition to a flexible network that will allow Sprint to light its Long Term Evolution network faster, as well as support additional LTE bandwidth it might wholesale from partners, as well as sell capacity to LTE customers.

Sprint Accelerates Network Vision

Verizon API Will "Turbo" Mobile Broadband

Verizon will publish an application programming interface that could allow mobile consumers to "turbocharge" the network bandwidth their smartphone apps use, presumably for a small additional fee.

"I think one of the things that you could do is guaranteed quality of service," said Hugh Fletcher, associate director for technology in Verizon's Product Development and Technology team. 

"One of the things that we are right now is very democratic in terms of allocating spectrum and bandwidth to users. And just because you request a high quality of service doesn't mean you're gonna get it. [The network] will try to give it to you, but if there's a lot of congestion, a lot of people using it, it won't kick people off," said Fletcher. Verizon API To Give Apps 'Turbo'

The network optimization API will likely expose attributes like jitter, latency, bandwidth, and priority to app developers, Fletcher said. 


Despite expected complaints from some network neutrality advocates, there is a reason such an API might provide clear value to end users. Some of you might be using 3G or 4G networks, using different air interfaces, to use interactive cloud applications. If you do that often enough, on many networks, you will have discovered the experience problem caused by latency. 


Where older GPRS or EDGE data networks featured round-trip latencies in the 600 millisecond to 700 msec. range, LTE networks feature round-trip latencies in the 50 msec. range. 


One of the important elements of a cloud-delivered application experience is latency performance, even though we most often think of "bandwidth" as being the key "experience" parameter. 


Some might say the key benefits will be for gaming apps, but many of us can assure you that other interactive apps, even those not intrinsically dependent on "real time" protocols, can suffer from mobile latency. Latency issues

Clearwire to Stop Selling Sprint 3G

Clearwire has stopped offering postpaid plans to new customers and will no longer sell dual-mode WiMAX/3G devices that use Sprint's CDMA network. Sprint, for its part, says it will not sell Clearwire WiMAX phones after 2012. Clearwire dumps Sprint 3G


The moves clearly point to a shift by both carriers to Long Term Evolution. Sprint's shift away from WiMAX, and Clearwire's shift away from 3G both mean each carrier is free to emphasize Long Term Evolution services expected to be offered on both networks as the "preferred" 4G network, going forward. 

Sprint Nextel Corp. says it will stop selling phones and other devices compatible with Clearwire Corp.'s network at the end of 2012, as it switches customers to its own Long Term Evolution network. 


It is possible to paint the picture as a sign of deteriorating relations between Sprint and Clearwire, but a shift to 4G and LTE is the real meaning of the changes. Sprint is carving out LTE capacity from its own 3G spectrum, while Clearwire needs to build an entirely new LTE network using spectrum it might otherwise devote to WiMAX. 


Also, as Clearwire shifts away from a dual role as both a wholesaler of capacity and a retail brand, it has to be cognizant of what its wholesale customers want, and Sprint, Clearwire's top customer, clearly is signaling it wants LTE plus CDMA to be the preferred "dual mode" approach it prefers. 


The irony is that Sprint owns a majority of Clearwire. Sprint to halt WiMAX sales

Cable Deal for T-Mobile USA?

With the Justice Department having filed suit to block the proposed AT&T purchase of T-Mobile USA, what is T-Mobile's plan if the deal falls through? It doesn't appear that T-Mobile USA actually has had a "plan B." But many speculate that if the AT&T acquisition is blocked, it will also signal that Sprint will not be allowed to buy T-Mobile USA, either.

That will leave T-Mobile USA in a tough position, as it needs spectrum to launch Long Term Evolution, and will emerge from the merger process weakened in the retail market.

Bernstein Research senior analysts Robin Bienenstock and Craig Moffett say the most likely scenario is not a Sprint merger but a spectrum deal with cable operators Comcast and Time Warner, both of which own spectrum T-Mobile USA could use to launch LTE services. The cable operators could monetize their spectrum and provide backhaul services.

To the extent that cable operators sell a wholesale service, they might then use T-Mobile USA rather than Clearwire. That would be more bad news for Clearwire.

Cable Deal Could Be T-Mobile 'Plan B

Is "4G Plus DirecTV" a Viable Alternative to FiOS?

Verizon Wireless seems to be cooking up an out of market “video plus broadband” plan, working with DirecTV. During its recent quarterly earnings report, Fran Shammo, Verizon Communications EVP said that the company was working on such an effort.

“You're going to see that come in the fourth quarter with the what we now call the Cantenna, which is not a commercial name obviously, but it's the antenna that we actually trialed with DIRECTV, which was extremely successful,” said Shammo.

Some will legitimately wonder whether that approach might even wind up being used in some Verizon markets where FiOS has not already started to be deployed. LTE plus DirecTV

There are some significant Verizon markets including cities like Boston, Buffalo, N.Y, Baltimore and Alexandria, Va. where FiOS construction has not started.

The obvious new question is the rational approach Verizon should take to upgrading its fixed-line network. There isn’t much doubt about optical access media being more resistant to some weather-related impairments than copper networks, nor is there much doubt that new optical facilities cost less to maintain than older copper networks.

But the business question is how much incremental investment ought to be made in the fixed network,  if video and broadband services can be provided using the wireless network. One might rationally argue that the cost of maintaining the fourth generation wireless network is lower than the cost of maintaining the FiOS network.

Obviously, if that is true then the avoided capital investment in new optical facilities is significant as well. That isn’t to argue that fixed and wireless networks are in any way equivalent in terms of absolute bandwidth. But there is a financial question.

If the expected revenue and operating cost advantage of FiOS, compared to 4G, does not provide the optimal financial return, then a wireless solution might be the most-rational way to invest new capital.

The problem is that voice is a negligible contributor to incremental revenue on a FiOS network, while video, though an important contributor of revenue, is not such a great contributor to profits. That leaves broadband, and revenue upside is tough.

That is not to say fiber to home facilities are unimportant, merely to say that they might not be the best use of capital for a provider that also is investing heavily in mobile broadband.

In fact, there is an interesting bit of data in the latest report from Akamai on global Internet usage. The global average fixed-line connection speed was 2.6 Mbps, and the global average peak connection speed was 11.4 Mbps.

Looking at mobile broadband connections, average connection speeds on known mobile providers ranged from 5.3 Mbps down to 209 kbps, while “average” peak connection speeds ranged from 23.4 Mbps down to 1.2 Mbps.

The interesting observation is that wireless broadband has the higher peak speeds, about double that of fixed line connections, with a variable “average” speed that in some cases also is twice as high as fixed-line connections, though such sessions are highly variable. When mobile broadband is slow, it is an order of magnitude slower than fixed line connections. Global broadband speeds

United States Leads LTE Market

4G Adoption Forecast

Critics often chide the United States for "lagging" in some measure of communications adoption. At various times in the past, that criticism has extended to use of mobile phones, text messaging, residential broadband and advanced mobile applications.

But U.S. consumers have shown an ability to adopt such innovations in relatively short order once the value was perceived. Nobody argues anymore that U.S. consumers somehow lag in use of any of those services.

More recently, the U.S. market has emerged as the leader in mobile applications, smart phone development and now will take leadership in 4G networks as well.

Verizon, MetroPCS, and AT&T will account for the majority of 4G Long Term Evolution connections globally by year-end 2011. Pyramid Research expects that U.S. mobile service providers, with seven million LTE connections, will account for 47 percent of the world’s LTE subscriptions.

Pyramid expects 71 percent of 5.4 million global LTE handset sales will come from the United States in the near term. Separately, Informa Telecoms & Media projects something on the order of 600 million 4G subscriptions in service by about 2016.

The strong demand for mobile broadband in the U.S. market also will allow operators to quickly recoup spending on capital investments. Verizon and NTT Docomo, both the largest operators in their respective countries, each launched LTE in December 2010.

US leads in LTE

Sprint to Launch LTE in Former CDMA Spectrum

Sprint executives now are explaining how they will launch Long Term Evolution services on the Sprint network, using the 1900 MHz spectrum.

If the implications are not clear, it means Sprint has decided to start using the LTE air interface in the same spectrum it presently uses to support its 3G CDMA network.

That means a complete upgrade to LTE across the entire Sprint footprint, cannibalizing CDMA spectrum.

Some had thought Sprint would use the 800-MHz spectrum freed up by the shut down of the iDEN network, or perhaps spectrum made available by Clearwire. It appears Sprint simply has decided it cannot wait, and is going to start pulling 3G spectrum off line as it adds LTE services in the same frequencies.

Sprint executives expect that by the end of 2013, 275 million potential users (PoPs) will be covered by the LTE network, including 100 percent of the area where Sprint's 4G WiMAX services now exist.

The move is highly significant, as it means Sprint is going to move fairly quickly to upgrade CDMA users to LTE.

Sprint to use CDMA bands for LTE

Sprint: LTE in iDEN Spectrum?

Few observers think Sprint will not adopt Long Term Evolution as one of its fourth generation network strategies, though most expect it also will continue to use Clearwire's WiMAX as well. If Sprint decides to switch to LTE, the company must find spectrum to do so.

"There is a high likelihood that LTE is in our future in one flavor or another," said Geoff Martin, who heads up the U.S. operator's M2M collaboration center. http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=464629

The logical candidate is the 14 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum now used to support the iDEN network and Nextel devices. Sprint has announced plans to decommission iDEN in 2013.

Sprint switching to LTE

Better Broadband a 2-Edge Sword for Mobile Service Providers

You won't find too many people arguing that Long Term Evolution, WiMAX or 4G in general is a bad thing, long term. You can find lots of people who might say the timing of the investment is an issue, that the danger of overpaying to acquire spectrum is an issue, or that protocol decisions carry some risk.

One hears less talk about the impact on voice services as lower-latency mobile broadband services are introduced. One advantage LTE offers application providers and access providers is much better latency performance, which means better real-time services performance. That means better voice and video.

But that lower latency is better for all providers of real-time services, not just the mobile broadband provider.

"Because LTE is all-IP and offers lower latency, it puts mobile calling services from OTT providers like Skype on more equal footing with existing carrier wireless voice services," says Tole Hart, Yankee Group senior analyst.

In other words, though LTE is strategic for mobile service providers, it also means a better platform for over-the-top application providers who have services requiring good latency performance.

Yankee Group forecasts smart phone penetration reaching 50 percent by the end of 2011 and 70 percent by 2013, meaning there will be more customers using their smart phones to download alternative calling apps from application providers like Skype, Vonage and Google Voice, and possibly from social communities like Facebook in the future.

The standard "advice" for mobile service providers is to enhance the value of their captive voice services. It's good advice, though strategically problematic, since the application providers will continue to enhance the value of their own services as well.

Obviously, at stake for carriers is a portion of the approximately $730.4 billion in global mobile voice service revenue. But there also will be danger from application providers who bundle text messaging with their voice services, as well.

Text messaging generates about $74.7 billion worth of revenue, and very-high profit margins.

Mobile service providers have important advantages in terms of creating bundles of services that will tend to keep customers "glued" to a basket of features including voice, text messaging and broadband access. That would be a simple adoption of the fixed-line "triple play" strategy, where the incremental cost of any one service is relatively low, in a package of three or four services.

Of course, in some markets mobile service providers might also be able to apply native quality of service mechanisms that provide meaningful experience advantages for end users, and are not available to other application providers. In other cases mobile service providers might want to sell those capabilities to third-party voice providers as a revenue-generating product.

The point is that there is no simple, fool-proof way to "firewall" a mobile voice service from more-effective application provider competition once an LTE network is in place. Bundles and quality assurance are likely to be important weapons, though.

Is Telstra Getting Out of Fixed Line Consumer Voice?

In what might strike you as an odd statement, Telstra executives say that VoIP is not sufficiently reliable to sell to consumers.

While launching a new IP telephony services aimed at small business customers, Telstra CEO David Thodey said the company was only continuing to review consumer VoIP services.

“As we think the product is mature enough, and has enough technical backup, we’ll bring that product to market,”Thodey said. However, Thodey didn’t appear to believe a Telstra VoIP offering would appear soon, according to Australian content provider Delimiter.

“We don’t think the quality and reliability is there," Thodey said. "We could bring it to the market tomorrow, but we don’t want to."

That explanation might strike some as quite odd, given the success carriers are having with consumer VoIP.

In fact, some of us might speculate that something else is afoot, namely an unwillingness to invest in consumer VoIP because Telstra might not want to sell consumer VoIP when it starts to buy wholesale access services from the National Broadband Network.

When that happens, Telstra, like other retail service providers, will have a choice of customers to serve. Given Telstra's belief in 4G Long Term Evolution, Telstra might be planning to rely on wireless for consumer voice, staying out of the consumer fixed-line voice service.

That might strike you as odd, but keep in mind that Telstra also operates separate cable TV facilities, running on separate networks. While you might think Telstra is giving up a "triple play" opportunity, it isn't. Telstra can deliver broadband access using the NBN, video entertainment on its existing cable TV networks and voice and mobile broadband on its planned 4G network.

In principle, Telstar could deliver voice using its cable networks as well, but Telstra might simply have concluded that mobile is the best way to sell voice to consumers.

http://links.eqentia.com/520b2ad1536d771f/?dst=http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/02/consumer-voip-not-reliable-says-telstra/&utm_campaign=visibli&utm_source=cisco&utm_medium=twitter

Verizon to Announce Additional 4G LTE Cities This Week

Verizon Wireless earlier this year identified 59 markets that will 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network service by the end of 2011.

These newly named areas, added to the 39 initial markets launched in December 2010 and 49 markets announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2011, mean that consumers and businesses in at least 147 U.S. cities will have access to the fastest, most advanced 4G mobile network in America.

We are told to watch for the latest set of cities with service on April 21, 2011. http://twitter.com/VerizonWireless/status/59968063570837504

Verizon Announces Additional 4G LTE Cities for 2011, 145 Markets by the End of the Year

Smart Grid Apps for LTE

Alcatel-Lucent and Tantalus have developed a "smart grid" system using Long Term Evolution networks. The system is important because "machine to machine" communications are expected to provide a key revenue segment for wireless providers, allowing mobile service providers to move beyond revenue models based on "devices used by people," to all sorts of other applications where sensors talk to machines.

Alcatel-Lucent and Tantalus have developed meter collectors and video cameras that will be connected over an LTE network.

Smart grid and other sensor-based applications will be important on the front end of the mobile business as drivers of new revenue, but also important on the back end, in terms of contributing to need for backhaul, middle mile and other capabilities.

LTE Coming Soon to the Smart Grid

4G for Business: What's the Value Driver?

Some people believe, and carriers obviously hope, that new fourth-generation networks will create and enable new applications and revenue streams differentiated from 3G. That hope or expectation is based on the higher bandwidth and lower latency offered by 4G networks.

(click on image for a larger view)

"Unlike 3G, 4G networks are end-to-end IP, designed from the start to support converged application traffic and provide improved latency," Yankee Group researchers note. Examples of new applications sometimes center on collaboration apps, especially forms of telepresence and videoconferencing.

Others suggest 4G can be used as a better replacement for existing 3G applications and use cases, as a backup or replacement for fixed-line broadband, backhaul or redundant capacity service for times of peak load.

Call me a skeptic at this point, but similar claims about "enabling new applications" were touted when 3G networks were deployed as well, and it took quite some time for important new apps to develop.

New 4G networks are a vast improvement over 3G in many ways, but the mere existence of the network probably will not lead to dramatically-new apps, right away. If that does happen, some have suggested, it will be "personal Wi-Fi hotspot" or video apps that likely will drive the lead apps.

Initially, though, 4G is likely to be viewed as "better wireless broadband," to support existing apps. I'd prefer to be proven wrong, and soon. But history suggests it will take some time for really new apps to develop, in the business or consumer spaces.

Yankee Group Research Report

Sprint as Wal-Mart?

“Sprint is at a crossroads,” said Craig Moffett, a New York-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “Their time-to- market advantage is now largely gone for 4G.”

That's true enough. What isn't so clear is how Sprint's positioning will evolve, now that the 4G platform does not offer such uniqueness.

Some might argue that Sprint will have emphasize its lower cost plans for unlimited wireless data use. "Unlimited," assuming the other carriers do not offer it, will offer some uniqueness.

I suspect Sprint will do more than that. Whether Sprint would agree with the Wal-Mart analogy is not clear. That Sprint would base its strategy on that seems unlikely. We'll see.

Sprint May Become Wal-Mart of Mobile as Rivals Move to `4G' - Bloomberg

Verizon CEO Touts 4G

It's fast. It might be pricey, not in terms of formal price ($50a  month for PC dongle service, with a 5 Gbyte cap, $80 for a 10-Gbyte cap), but if it encourages people to watch lots of video on their PCs, using the air cards, that they might not have in the past, it could get expensive.

AT&T Acquires 700-MHz spectrum from Qualcomm

AT&T is buying spectrum licenses in the 700 MHz frequency band from Qualcomm for $1.925 billion. The spectrum will be used as part of AT&T's Long Term Evolution 4G mobile broadband network.

Qualcomm had been using the spectrum to support its FLO TV business, but Qualcomm is shutting the service in March 2011.

The spectrum covers more than 300 million people total nationwide and includes 12 MHz of 700 MHz D and E block spectrum covers more than 70 million people in five of the top 15 U.S. metropolitan areas, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The network also includes 6 MHz of 700 MHz "D block" spectrum covers more than 230 million people across the rest of the United States.

Frequencies in the 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands are highly favored for mobile services because the signals feature both more range and greater ability to penetrate buildings. As indoor coverage is a continual issue for mobile services, the new frequencies will help AT&T deal with indoor coverage for its LTE network.

read more here

What Does "4G" Mean, Now that ITU Has Defined it Out of Existence?

The International Telecommunications Union has settled on a definition of "fourth generation" networks that requires 100 Mbps in a mobile deployment and 1 Gbps in a fixed deployment. None of the actual 4G networks now in operation or planned are actually going to run that fast. So now users have to decide whether standards are set in the marketplace or by standards bodies.

Sprint Will be Shutting Down a Network, But it is iDEN

Sprint and Clearwire have been testing Long Term Evolution as an air interface using fallow spectrum. obviously raising questions about whether Sprint Nextel and Clearwire might ditch WiMAX for LTE.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says the only networks that are slated for replacement at some point are Sprint Nextel's legacy networks, ranging from iDEN, used for the Nextel part of the operation, to the older second-generation and third-generation networks Sprint also supports.

LTE isn't necessarily on Sprint's roadmap, Hesse says, though it is conceivable Sprint Nextel might be interested in supporting dual-mode "WiMAX-plus-LTE handsets.

It is a simple fact that each generation of mobile networks gets replaced, about every 10 years, though the transition periods can last longer. Hesse notes that “2G will eventually come to an end; CDMA will come to an end; GSM will come to an end and iDEN will come to an end.”

“Over time, as fewer customers are using our 2G networks, we can use that spectrum for the CDMA/EVDO network.” Even the current iDEN spectrum might eventually be switched over to support CDMA and EVDO on that band of frequencies, especially to support voice services.

read more here