At the Sprint Developers Conference, this week, Google’s Brad Horowitz announced that Sprint was enabling Google voice to work on their 3G network, reports Alan Weissberger on the WiMax 360 blog.
Sprint is rolling out Android phones including the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment, and is prepared to let Skype and other VoIP schemes also work on their mobile network- even though that might result in less cellular minutes used and correspondingly less revenue.
Sprint also announced that it will not charge customers for certain types of call forwarding. In particular, conditional call forwarding for busy calls or calls not answered using the customer`s wireless phone will be free, beginning mid-November.
In two back to back sessions on 3G/4G, it was revealed that Clearwire is not supporting the QOS capability that’s inherent in the IEEE 802.16e MAC. Currently, all traffic on their CLEAR network is best effort. QOS is important for latency sensitive apps like VoIP and real time video conferencing. It will also be important for mobile video. But a mobile VoIP service (with QOS) is not expected till the end of 2010 or 2011.
When a panel of SPRINT executives were asked by this author, “Why no announcement of the availability of a tri mode phone (3G, mobile WiMAX, WiFi),” the reply was that there will be no such announcement any time soon. However, in a later session, the SPRINT commissioned tri-mode phone was slated to be commercially available sometime in 2010.
SPRINT was NOT willing to take all the risk in making MIDs available on their 3G (or Clearwire’s 4G WiMAX) networks. Instead, the MID vendor and SPRINT would have to share the risk and uncertain ROI on such devices. That’s why the Samsung Mondi costs $450. If Clear’s Mondi dumped Windows Mobile for Android, added a good VoIP application and tethering, I – for one – would be tempted.
Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel continues to lose money and subscribers while AT&T and Verizon Wireless added more than 3 million subscribers in the third quarter.
Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. mobile service, lost 801,000 postpaid subscribers in the third quarter, a significant number although below the 870,000 losses analysts had feared. Losses have slowed from 991,000 in the second quarter and 1.25 million in the first quarter.
The quarter ended with Sprint having 48.3 million wireless customers on its various networks. That puts Sprint in a fairly distant third position behind Verizon Wireless at 89 million and AT&T at 81.6 million based on their 2009 third-quarter results.
