Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Sprint Plans 1XEV-DO By Year's End
By Brad Smith
June 22, 2004
news@2 direct


Rumors had been running rampant for weeks that Sprint had decided to announce this week it would launch 1XEV-DO data services, choosing that technology over 1XEV-DV. Those rumors rang true today, although the carrier left the possibility open it might use 1XEV-DV in the future.

The big winners in Sprint’s major suppliers Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks, Motorola and Samsung. Sprint plans on spending $1 billion this year and next to upgrade its network.

The big loser is Flarion Technologies, whose Flash-OFDM technology Sprint had considered but rejected. Flarion still has ongoing trials with several carriers, including Nextel Communications. But Oliver Valente, Sprint's vice president of technology development, said the carrier had concerns about scalability and availability of Flarion's technology at this time.

Verizon Wireless already offers 1XEV-DO commercially in two cities and has announced plans to launch the service nationwide this year and next. 1XEV-DO provides typical data rates of 300 to 500 kilobits per second, comparable to DSL speeds, with theoretical top speeds of 2.4 megabits per second.

Valente said he could see "several permutations" where Sprint might work out roaming agreements with Verizon Wireless in some locations.

In a bit of competitive jousting, Valente also took a shot at plans announced by Cingular Wireless to push up its timetable for high-speed data. Valente said he doubts Cingular's plans are realistic to use a W-CDMA upgrade called High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSPDA) in 2005.

"Sprint's view," Valente told a news conference at the SuperComm show in Chicago, "is that they [Cingular's plans] are aspirational rather than realistic."

Sprint wouldn't go into detail about its launch plans for 1XEV-DO, saying it will have commercial availability in "select" markets by the end of the year and in a majority of top metropolitan markets in 2005. No pricing was announced. The service initially will use laptop PC cards, with handsets coming out in 2005. A decision also hasn't been made yet on whether the new service will have the same Sprint Vision name as the current CDMA2000 1X data service.

Valente wouldn't reveal details about specific contracts Sprint has with its vendors, but said they essentially are agreed upon and will be with its existing vendors, Lucent, Nortel, Motorola and Samsung.

Sprint could decide to implement 1XEV-DV even as it is building out its 1XEV-DO network, he said, although 1XEV-DV equipment is not expected to be available until 2006. 1XEV-DV has an advantage over 1XEV-DO in that the former allows voice and data on the same channel, while 1XEV-DO requires a dedicated data channel.

Equipment availability and marketing timing were the two reasons cited by Valente for going ahead with 1XEV-DO now.

Valente also said Sprint sees 1XEV-DO as complementary to its Wi-Fi hot spot strategy. The carrier has about 2,200 hot spots, mostly through roaming agreements, and plans 10,000 by the end of the year.

He also said Sprint's MMDS spectrum, which is in limited use now, might be used in the future for wireless broadband access using a number of different technologies, including CDMA and WiMAX.




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