Open letter to Sprint: Don’t give up on WiMAX

The news last week that Sprint and Clearwire’s WiMAX venture has sputtered sent Clearwire into a stock freefall and has many media outlets questioning Sprint’s dedication to its pet technology. The big question everyone is asking is whether Sprint’s ambitious plans to launch Xohm nationwide are being scrapped.

Granted, Sprint hasn’t done much to quell those concerns. It issued a cryptic statement last week saying Sprint is still committed to launching WiMAX in its two trial markets -- Chicago and D.C.-Baltimore -- this year, but it strongly hinted its nationwide rollout plans may change after a winter re-evaluation. What’s more, in its earnings the week before, Sprint admitted to spending only $73 million on its WiMAX rollout in Q3 -- not an encouraging start to a network that’s supposed to cost a handful of billions. Sprint is purportedly building full networks in three major metro areas -- the other is the Nokia Siemens project in Dallas -- and beginning network planning and site work in dozens of other markets. We’ll apparently find out if those plans have changed at the beginning of the year.

Sprint is obviously in a rough transition period, and the world’s first and largest mobile WiMAX network may become a casualty on that transition. It has no permanent CEO, and the acting chief executive Paul Saleh isn’t in a position to make the decision one way or another to invest further in a costly and untried technology or ax it. That job falls to the new CEO, whoever he or she may be. There will be a lot of pressure on the Sprint board to pick a Mr. Fix-it CEO that will right Sprint’s foundering ship, reversing the subscriber flight it has suffered over the last year and focusing on future earnings. $2.5 billion to $3 billion to build a new whiz-bang network probably won’t be on that CEO’s to-do list.

But if Sprint does pick a leader willing to think a little more to the future, he or she might find several reasons to salvage WiMAX, even if Sprint is forced to reduce the scope of its rollout and lower spending to more investor-friendly levels. First, Sprint has to do something with that 2.5 GHz spectrum. It has to, otherwise it will lose it, according to its license conditions.

Second, and most importantly, WiMAX is simply the future: an enormous opportunity for Sprint and the wireless and Internet industries as a whole. I know it sounds like I just drank the Kool-Aid, and I welcome the withering remarks I’m sure you’ll be e-mailing me in the next few minutes. But I fully admit it -- I’m a convert. I’m not mindlessly backing a technology, though. I’ve been covering this industry long enough to know how foolhardy that is. Instead, I’m advocating Sprint’s stated -- and hopefully still intact -- business model for WiMAX, one that does away with the walled garden of mobile data services entirely, one which allows us to pay for access and choose our own applications as opposed to the half-assed ones our operators choose to feed us. I’m not advocating the dumb pipe (I’ve made the case that ‘open’ doesn’t equate ‘dumb’ in several other columns before). But if today’s pipe is ‘smart’ then I choose to take a very anti-intellectual stance.

If Sprint had tapped LTE or even UMB or even an EV-DO rollout built on hundreds of thousands of femto and pico cells, I would still have been behind the launch as long as that new business model was attached. As it stands, Sprint’s plan is the only initiative out there that can rejuvenate the mobile data network. It could transform what is essentially a voice network into not just an extension of the Internet but the most critical component of the Internet. If Sprint pulls this network off right and others follow its example, 10 years from now we won’t be able to remember the day our computing and networking needs were tied to a PC or desk—just as today we can hardly imagine a time our phone calls were tied to the kitchen or office phone.

The operative word here is ‘if,’ though. My cheerleading for Xohm is dependent on Sprint following through on its original convictions. If it tethers a WiMAX subscription to specific devices, if it starts piling on marginal services and inflating bills with content fees, if it starts subsidizing handsets and locking customers into onerous contracts, then the whole project fails. And if it fails, WiMAX is likely to fail -- at least the vision of WiMAX the industry has been painting for the last few years. So I’m pleading now: Sprint, keep Xohm going.

E-mail me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.