Sprint has said it will offer 4G LTE service by June in six larger markets — Kansas City, Mo., Baltimore, Dallas, San Antonio, Atlanta and Houston — and that the service will cover 120 million people by the end of the year.

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For the three months ended Dec. 31, Sprint lost $1.3 billion, or 43 cents per share, on revenue of $8.7 billion. That compares to a loss of $929 million, or 31 cents per share, on revenue of $8.3 billion for the same quarter a year earlier. It’s also a much wider loss than in the prior quarter.

“Our strong fourth quarter performance illustrates the power of matching iconic devices like the iPhone with our simple, unlimited plans and industry-leading customer experience,” CEO Dan Hesse said in a statement. “During the past year, Sprint added more than 5 million net new customers and grew wireless service revenue by more than 5 percent, including 17 percent for the Sprint platform. This momentum gives us confidence as we execute our Network Vision upgrade and 4G LTE roll-out.”

The company added more than 1.6 million customers overall during the quarter, including both prepaid, wholesale and contract customers.

Sprint also added two more cities — Baltimore and its hometown of Kansas City — to the roster of launch markets for the company’s LTE service, which will begin around midyear. It will also launch service in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Atlanta at that time.

Getting FCC clearance is a condition of a 15-year fourth-generation spectrum-and-equipment-sharing accord between the two companies. LightSquared has said the Sprint accord will help it save $13 billion through the end of this decade.

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The agreement soothes investor fears Sprint was seeking to distance itself from its 4G provider as the carrier planned its own new high-speed network on the LTE technology favored by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless. Sprint will pay $926 million for unlimited use of Clearwire’s WiMax 4G network through 2013, giving Clearwire a needed cash infusion.

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The news sent the company’s shares soaring by as much as 34 percent. Investors have been concerned about Clearwire’s ability to continue to add customers, as its largest customer and majority shareholder, Sprint Nextel Corp., appears to be distancing itself from the company.

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Monday, Standard & Poor’s warned that it could downgrade Sprint’s debt further into junk territory, citing the likelihood the carrier would spend more money than it takes in through 2013 and the potential for it to refinance its debt.

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The No. 3 wireless company is making a multibillion dollar gamble that Apple Inc.’s gadget will be the ticket to a turnaround, even though Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse told the board in August that Sprint would likely lose money on the deal until 2014, according to people familiar with the matter.

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At an event Monday at New York’s Time Warner Center, Samsung will announce it is selling the device starting in September on AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA’s networks, according to people familiar with the plans, but Verizon Wireless said it won’t offer the device.

“We have an extensive portfolio that offers customers a great variety of devices, including the Samsung Droid Charge,” said Brenda Raney, a Verizon Wireless spokeswoman. She declined to elaborate.

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The timing, however, indicates Apple’s new iPhone will hit the market later than expected and too late to contribute to sales in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September. Most observers had expected the device to arrive next month.

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The decision is a setback to Research In Motion Ltd. and comes at a difficult time for the company, which has seen its stock price tumble nearly 60% this year as sales of its signature phones have been losing ground to competitors. Sprint’s reversal means the device hasn’t yet found any support from the three largest U.S. wireless carriers, which includes AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless.

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The deal, disclosed in a letter to investors in Mr. Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners hedge funds, reflects progress on the business side of an ambitious plan that still faces significant regulatory and technological hurdles, including complaints from the Defense Department and others that it would interfere with global positioning system devices.

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Leap warned the acquisition would harm consumers as the reduced competition would result in two massive super-carriers–AT&T and Verizon Wireless–who would control more than 80 percent of the wireless market.

Sprint Nextel Corp., the No. 3 U.S. carrier, has been the most vocal opponent of the merger and has called on regulators to block it. Last week, MetroPCS Communications Inc., which like Leap provides prepaid cellphone service, also said the combination represents too high a concentration of wireless spectrum.

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The company’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will also give the service a more thorough demo at the ninth D: All Things Digital conference in a week.

Yesterday, the Internet search giant invited AllThingsD and other press to join them at the event in New York, where it vaguely asked to come “join us at a Google partner event to experience our latest innovations.”

Well, it’s a digital wallet for mobile devices, centered around Google’s Android phones. The service has been developed within Google in a team led by Commerce VP Stephanie Tilenius.

In addition, Bloomberg is reporting that Google is partnering with Sprint Nextel.

The service will supposedly let consumers with certain Android devices pay for goods and redeem coupons with their handsets using near-field communication technology.

The first Google Android device to have NFC built in is the Nexus S, which Andy Rubin showed off at our D: Dive Into Mobile event in December.

Bloomberg also is reporting that Google is using hardware and software from other companies, including VeriFone Systems and ViVOtech.

In the past, Google has tried a number of payment offerings, none of which have been too successful. Google Checkout is used today by the Android Market to buy applications, but users have been slow to adopt it, forcing the search giant to ink direct billing relationships with carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile USA.

Google has also made a number of acquisitions in the space, including in-app payment provider Jambool.

But a mobile payments or wallets service would be a different beast that would compete more directly with internal initiatives by eBay’s PayPal, Amazon, or traditional credit card companies, such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

And, just yesterday, San Francisco start-up Square unveiled a system that it thinks can replace the need for registers and wallets.

The difficulty of the mobile payments market is that it requires cooperation from so many parties, including the retailers, the handset manufacturers and the payment companies and banks.

Many companies, including Google, are trying to be the glue that brings them together, contributing to at least one part of that dynamic. So far, Google has not been a sticky solution in the online payments arena.

It’s unclear what Google would charge for the service on a per transaction basis, like other payment providers, or whether it would pursue some other business model, where it captures information about the user and provides more targeted advertising.

Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will be appearing at D9 as the opening speaker Tuesday night, where the topic of mobile payments will definitely be up for discussion.

The concerns were expressed in a letter released Thursday by Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas) and Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass) after the lawmakers asked the four main U.S. wireless carriers to explain their policies for collecting and storing location data.

The carriers–AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA–said they seek subscribers’ consent before tracking their location, but said they can’t control how applications developed by third parties use location information that the carriers don’t provide.

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“We anticipate there will be some markets we will have to divest,” Mr. Stephenson said in an interview.

AT&T’s proposed plan to buy T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom AG for $39 billion is expected to face heavy scrutiny from regulators and opposition from consumer-advocacy groups and competitors. Rivals Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. have already been vocal about the harmful impact from the deal.

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Sprint shares tumbled 13 percent to $4.39 in Monday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, even as shares of rivals were trading higher. The stock had gained 19 percent this year through Friday’s close.

“This will certainly make Sprint’s life more difficult,” said Roger Entner, a consultant with Recon Analytics.

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The move is part of a planned transition, but it raises some interesting questions about what Sprint might do with the 800MHz spectrum that it will free up by shutting down the old iDEN network. Reports suggest the company already is planning to build an LTE network that would augment its current WiMax-based 4G network.

Verizon Wireless is already selling LTE service in a number of areas, with plans to expand nationwide. AT&T has announced plans to build an LTE network in addition to adding a speedier version of its existing network. T-Mobile has said it hopes to move to LTE eventually as well, though it currently lacks the spectrum to do so.

Sprint had the early lead in next-generation networks by going with WiMax, but many still expect the carrier to ultimately add an LTE network as well, something the company has hinted it may do, but has yet to publicly commit to doing.

Sprint didn’t reference LTE in any way in this week’s announcement, but said it will, in the fourth quarter of this year, start offering push-to-talk devices from Kyocera and Motorola Mobility that run on its CDMA network. Among the initial devices, Sprint said, will be an “ultra-rugged camera flip phone” as well as a touch-screen Android device with a full keyboard. More phones are planned for next year, it said.

The company is pitching its new Sprint Direct Connect network as a more powerful evolution of the push-to-talk network popularized by Nextel. Although Sprint may be able to offer more powerful devices, expanded coverage area and better in-building coverage, it will be a tough shift for some companies that have widely deployed phones and applications customized for the iDEN network.

Sprint said it will work with developers who have built applications specific to the Nextel network to bring them over to the new Direct Connect devices. Sprint also said that the new devices will interoperate with existing push-to-talk devices as well as mobile radios widely used by emergency services personnel and many businesses.

Although it hasn’t publicly outlined LTE plans, Sprint has talked about the ability of its planned network shifts to “enhance its 4G technology options.” Sprint first started outlining its network transition plans back in December, though with less detail and specificity.

The transition will also be costly for Sprint, which has said it expects to spend between $4 billion and $5 billion on the multiyear effort, though over a seven-year period it expects to save between $10 billion and $11 billion through lower energy costs, reduced roaming expenses and other efficiencies.

Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston’s Emerson College with smartphones and unlimited service in exchange for students working gratis on the company’s local Internet push.

Universities, in some cases, receive funding or proprietary consumer data from companies for their research. Students get experience they can display on their résumés, and add lively classes to the usual mix of lectures and written exams.

“We are helping students to go out and get hired,” says Randy Hlavac, an instructor at Northwestern University’s Medill School. “They’ve done the work.”

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The shift represents a victory for Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers, which owns a non-controlling majority stake in the next-generation wireless-service provider and relies on the company’s 4G network to service its customers.

Sprint has long argued that Clearwire should spend its limited capital on finishing the expansion of its network, but Clearwire has insisted on maintaining an independent retail strategy that competes with the Sprint brand.

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The new device will be thinner, lighter and will come with a faster processor, more memory and a more powerful graphics processor, said the people familiar with the matter. It will have a front-facing camera for the first time for features like video-conferencing, but the resolution of the new iPad’s display will be similar to the first iPad, they said.

The new iPad will be available through Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., but not Sprint Nextel Corp. or T-Mobile USA in the U.S., according to some of the people familiar with the matter.

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The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all.

Today, we ring up Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore (pictured here), who is the man in charge of its Windows Phone 7 efforts.

It’s no small task, as the software giant struggles to get back into the mobile game and catch up from far behind in a very competitive smartphone race led by both Google and Apple.

Here’s the video of the Belfiore interview with Walt Mossberg:

Next up: Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse on the battles for dominance among wireless carriers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101224/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-microsoft-windows-phone-7-head-joe-belfiore/feed/ 15 http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-nextel-ceo-dan-hesse-talks-about-clearwire-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-nextel-ceo-dan-hesse-talks-about-clearwire-video/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 05:24:18 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=326

In an interview at D: Dive Into Mobile, Sprint-Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said that despite the fact it owns roughly 54 percent of Clearwire, Sprint doesn’t control the company or its board of directors. Walt Mossberg gave him a little grief about it, asking, “Who did that deal?”

Also during the interview: Why it made sense to have an outside company build its 4G network, what’s different between 3G and 4G and whether or not 4G is really unlimited. He also talked about why he likes Consumer Reports while other wireless executives don’t.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-nextel-ceo-dan-hesse-talks-about-clearwire-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-nextel-ceo-dan-hesse-we-couldnt-wait-to-deploy-lte/ http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-nextel-ceo-dan-hesse-we-couldnt-wait-to-deploy-lte/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:05:41 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=315 Asked in an interview at D: Dive Into Mobile why Sprint is deploying WiMax and not LTE as its 4G technology, Sprint-Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said it was the success of the iPhone that demonstrated that the market was ready for 4G services.

“We wanted to be first, and WiMax was available” in 2008, Hesse said. “I can’t deny that LTE will be a bigger ecosystem, but we couldn’t wait. We thought the market was ready.”

Also during his talk, Dan Hesse said that during the last two quarters, Sprint has been the fastest-growing post-paid mobile brand in the U.S. and that the company’s overall subscriber numbers have been offset by losses on its older Nextel network. Hesse also said that Sprint-Nextel will begin to wind down operations of the Nextel iDen network and migrate its customers to Sprint in 2013, though not before push-to-talk features are added to Sprint. “All Gs come to an end,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-nextel-ceo-dan-hesse-we-couldnt-wait-to-deploy-lte/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-ceo-dan-hesse-at-dive-into-mobile/ http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-ceo-dan-hesse-at-dive-into-mobile/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 22:45:26 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=222

When Sprint CEO Dan Hesse joined the company three years ago, the third-largest carrier was bleeding subscribers from having a poor reputation for customer service and facing stiff competition from the likes of AT&T, which holds the exclusive on the iPhone.

Since then, Sprint has stemmed the losses, mostly by beefing up its customer service and by investing in the prepaid sector to attract a wider audience during the economic downturn. Going forward, Sprint looks to its 4G strategy for growth through its ownership stake in WiMax-provider Clearwire. Next up, Hesse joins Walt Mossberg onstage.

3:45 pm: Walt welcomes Dan Hesse to the stage. You can’t have mobile without networks, says Walt. You’ve led the way on 4G; tell us about it.

3:46 pm: Dan: We are getting San Francisco up soon, and will have 120 million POPs by the end of the year, or about a third of the country.

He explains what 4G is: 3G for was email and Web pages, but 4G is for multimedia and video.

The best analogy is that 4G is the wide open freeway vs. an interstate that provides the same speeds, but you have to stop along the way.

3:48 pm: Walt: Why are you using WiMax when the two other carriers are using LTE?

Hesse: Back in 2008, we wanted to be first, and WiMax was available right now. (Lots to do with TDD, and other technical mumbo jumbo). Technically, there’s no difference. I can’t deny that LTE will be a bigger ecosystem, but we couldn’t wait. We thought the market was ready.

With the success of the iPhone, we thought it was ready now.

Walt: How much leadership did it give you?

Hesse: Well, it made Verizon move a lot faster….In 2010, we’ll have 120 million POPs, and the EVO and Epic (two 4G phones) have been really successful.

Walt: How successful?

Hesse: If you were to go to Clearwire’s wholesale numbers, you should think of Sprint’s lion’s share of the wholesale numbers.

Walt: Was it worth the investment?

Hesse: I think so.

3:53 pm: Hesse: 4G is one element of many.

Walt: You like Consumer Reports, unlike the guy here earlier [AT&T's Glenn Lurie].

Hesse: Sprint is the fastest growing brand of postpaid in the U.S.–not the Nextel brand, where we’ve been losing subscribers.

3:55 pm: Walt: Are you going to get the iPhone?

Hesse: Can’t say.

Walt: Would you like the iPhone?

Hesse: Under the right conditions, yes, I would. It’s a wonderful phone.

3:56 pm: Backing up a bit, Walt now asks about an industry trend toward tiered pricing for data plans, where the more you use, the more you pay.

Sprint hasn’t yet limited users’ traffic.

Hesse: Customers will pay a premium for simplicity. Even if it’s not in their best economic interest, they will go with the unlimited plan. We were the first to come out with truly unlimited text, voice and data with the Simply Everything plan.

3:59 pm: Walt: Are you not going to do tiered pricing?

Hesse: So far, we aren’t, he says, which gets a round of applause from the audience. But Sprint did up the cost of the unlimited plans of the most capable devices on the network.

4:00 pm: Walt: Unlimited means unlimited or doesn’t it?

Hesse: No, it doesn’t. What if they have the SlingBox streaming 24×7?

4:01 pm: Hesse: The trend is toward one plan for all of your devices, like tablets, phones, PCs, etc.

Walt: Are you going to offer plans for all those devices?

Hesse: We are thinking about it. That’s the next step to simplicity. Three years ago, it was about one device.

4:02 pm: Walt: People aren’t counting minutes, now they are counting megabytes and things people don’t understand.

Hesse: Something has to give; what’s going to be the form? Do you have meters, do you have tiers, do you increase the price of the unlimited plans?

Another option is to have a lot more spectrum available to add capacity at a lower cost.

Walt: Are you talking about taking away the spectrum that the elderly use to watch their TV?

Hesse: If more spectrum is available, you can use more frequencies, which is a lot less expensive than splitting cell sites and putting in more towers.

Walt: There’s some confusion about Clearwire. They are opening stores and selling laptops and modems. You own most of that company, and they are building your WiMax network. Why are they competing with you?

Hesse: I have a wholesale business that resells minutes to Leap, so it’s the same thing.

4:06 pm: Walt’s giving Hesse grief about the structure of the Clearwire deal. Despite Sprint owning roughly 54 percent of the company, Sprint doesn’t control the board.

Walt: Who did that deal?

Hesse: Two thumbs pointing at himself [me]. When you have this many owners of the company, we can’t agree.

4:08 pm: Walt: What’s the value of 4G?

Hesse: The experience is really fast, and we offer unlimited plans on 4G. There’s a five-gigabyte cap on 3G, but 4G is completely unlimited.

Walt’s curious if 4G is really life-changing and transformative. Sprint’s beating the other guys by 2x, not 10x or 20x.

Hesse: My son showed me his speed test on his EVO at home, and it was over 8 mbps, so it depends.

4:11 pm: Questions from the audience. The Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley asks about the potential deal between Clearwire and T-Mobile, which may be falling apart because of Clearwire’s recent $1 billion in debt that it has raised.

Hesse deflects the question despite several reports to the contrary, by saying he didn’t know anything about that.

Another audience question: What’s your stance on network neutrality?

Hesse: The FCC has come out with a proposal, and we are very supportive of it.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101207/sprint-ceo-dan-hesse-at-dive-into-mobile/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/ http://allthingsd.com/20101206/can-you-hear-me-now-d-dive-into-mobile-debuts-tonight/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:00:47 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=38204

Tonight, All Things Digital will debut its first extension of the D: All Things Digital conference, with D: Dive Into Mobile.

The original nickname for the event was “mini-d,” since it is shorter than big-D, focused on one key topic and has a more intimate audience.

But the speakers Walt Mossberg and I have assembled are anything but small on the critical topic of mobile–beginning with tonight’s opening session with Google Android kingpin Andy Rubin.

There is a lot to talk, about from monetization of the ever-popular operating system to its rivalry with the Apple iPhone to its relationship with wireless carriers.

D: Dive Into Mobile continues all day Tuesday, with speakers that include: Dan Hesse, President and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google Ad Products Management head Susan Wojcicki; AT&T Emerging Devices President Glenn Lurie; and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.

D: Dive Into Mobile is being held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and, as usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

Along with Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

For more information, click here for D: Dive Into Mobile news and more.

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