Vision - November/December 2008 - (Page 12)

Is WiMax a replacement to Wi-Fi? I don’t see Wi-Fi necessarily going away. You will see PCs that have WiMax but will have Wi-Fi on them too. So they are more complementary to each other and it will revert to the user, which one they prefer to use. Wi-Fi is only as fast as the network that it is hooked up to, so for a lot of customers, WiMax is going to be a lot faster than their Wi-Fi connection. How is the merger between Sprint and Clearwire progressing? We are merging all of our 4G infrastructure assets to create a new company, Clearwire. XOHM is our 4G brand now inside Sprint. The XOHM business unit, once the transaction is closed, actually becomes part of the Clearwire company. XOHM will move and the employees at the Herndon office will become part of Clearwire. Sprint will own 50 percent of the new Clearwire. The other partners are Intel, Google, Time Warner, Comcast and Brighthouse. It requires FCC and DOJ approval, but there is no reason to believe that is not going to happen. a 3G network, but boy, if you are not on 3G, it’s not a very pleasurable experience. What are your plans for Nextel? Our plan is to continue to reinvigorate the IDEN product line. It’s running at its best performance levels ever. We also have now launched Nextel Direct Connect that runs on the CDMA network. You may have heard the term Q-Chat. We are bringing the button to CDMA. The button has a lot of value in instantaneous communication. It is the fastest push-to-talk network—the IDEN network as well as our CDMA network in the country by far. Its validation is that Verizon is now launching a push-to-talk network. We’ve got the best, highest performing push-to-talk network and the fastest. We have announced a bunch of new handsets. Most recently we announced the BlackBerry for the IDEN network that is doing very well. Are there any spectrum or regulatory issues? We hope not, but we can’t be sure. Those are precisely the kinds of things that the FCC is looking at. Knock on wood, there won’t be any issues with the kind of spectrum we have. Is there a content play? Sprint has partnered to create content with NFL and NASCAR. There could very well be a content play. There will be a website that customers can go to and get access to content. But right now, we think of the Internet as very open—whatever content is available on the Internet, you can go to. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were new content plays. What is push to x? Push to x is vernacular for push to other things so you could push videos, push content, push anything you want to a bunch of people—except for talk or voice. It could be text, email, video, music—pick it, whatever it is, that is the x. Commercial networking with a button whatever it is. There is work being done about what are the push to x applications that are likely to take off and that is likely why Verizon is getting in to the business. We are looking to see if there is an opportunity for the button or push to beyond just talk. But you have to figure out the business model and what the applications are. Is the iPhone a problem? AT&T announced their earnings yesterday and their iPhone sales have done well. You take a fairly expensive device and sell it for $200. There is no question that the phone is selling well at that price point. AT&T says in the third quarter alone, their subsidies on the iPhone, were $900 million. The other thing is that our 3G network is five times bigger than AT&Ts. That has been the Achilles Heel of the iPhone. It works if you are on lines talking to our customer care reps that talk to our customers every day as well as going in to the retail stores to see if things are changing. I think the thing for us is that wireless is a very good industry to be in right now. Cell phones have become a real staple. Five years ago if this had happened, I think it would have been tougher for the wireless industry because some people would have dropped their cell phones. Now if customers are looking to economize, they most likely will drop their landline, not their cell phones. Cell phones have become indispensable. We will feel a certain impact, but we will feel less impact than some other industries. I think where we will see it, is that customers instead of taking the $89 plan, may go for the $59 plan. They will try to economize a little that way. They perhaps will upgrade to new phones a little less often. They will use their existing phone for a longer period of time. On the business side, we are feeling it a little as companies cut back. Say, we are the wireless provider for an investment firm in New York and they go out of business or go through a big downsizing, then we are going to sell fewer phones. That said, they may come back on the consumer side, because they may go down the street and buy a phone on their own. But net-net, there is another piece that we watch closely that is most concerning to us is people just paying their bills. Bad debt, people not paying their bills, taking longer to pay their bills, those kinds of issues, we have to watch very closely. So far, we have had minor but not significant issues in that regard. And credit worthiness, I’m very glad that early in the year, we became less dependent on sub-prime customers. We raised the credit scores required fairly substantially for Sprint and for post-paid service. The economy will impact every industry negatively but us, much less than most. Are you going to CES? I’m a big gadget freak. I went last year with Brad Anderson, the CEO of Best Buy. We were supposed to do some business and all we did was talk about our stereo history. Of course, I spent a lot of time in the wireless and cell phone areas, but there also were a lot of cool areas with cars. I would really like to go to the high-end audio area. That is my deal. • www.ce.org How will the struggling economy affect consumer behavior? We have been watching it pretty closely, and I have been spending more time on the front 12 november/December 2008 http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - November/December 2008

Vision - November/December 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In this Issue The Economist C4 Trends Going Global Visionary CES Unveiled Eco-Intelligence Is Vital in a Sustainable Global Market XGP— A Game Changer Enhancing the Tech Experience High-Definition Decade Public-Private Partnerships CEA Newsline Tech Speak Tech Policy Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - November/December 2008

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