legion125

April at the earliest, end of May latest.

Used BB before. Got an email from them last month since I'm part of their rewards program. They were offering a special, just typed in the phone number and you get the instant $50 off at the register when you purchase your next phone by years end. Signed up for all three lines so I guess we'll be using them this year too. Was curious by the Shack since they have good deals occasionally, but every time I would go to the local one, it was always crowed with one maybe two clerks. Might try a different store on the next cycle.

Task ready

Warning - This is a long but interesting article none the less. A history of RIMM and how RIM, Nokia, PALM and MS were blindsided by the iPhone and failed to recognize it. Also how RIM's "incremental approach" to updates caused it to fall farther & farther behind. You will also find the ironic statement by Ballmer. http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/21/2789676/rim-blackberry-mike-lazaridis-jim-balsillie-lost-empire

I read this article today and had to share. Mr. Cooper discusses how Sprint and T-Mobile can't compete head to head with the Big Two but need to innovate to survive and that LS2 issues could be resolved but it was politics that got into the way and the market place needs a third competitor, be it, an OS or carrier. http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/20/2811861/marty-cooper-interview He also mentions that a shortage of spectrum isn't an issue (Good companion piece to this post). http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/241-report-mobile-broadband-traffic-skyrocketed-83-in-2h11/ Very insightful read, I enjoyed it.

It seems the first Fire found it's niche with its size and capabilities, but a 10" is putting it with the heavy hitters and being Amazon specific I'm curious how it will compete and if there is a market for it?

Although NV should solve both sides of the issue, back haul is the culprit. If done correctly, everything will work right and all the LTE fiends will be injecting themselves with doses of LTE, while the common person will have good 3G speeds. A win/win for everyone.

Although LTE will be up and running, I'm skeptical about Apple and LTE. As every one is aware, Apple likes every thing in tidy little packages. That's why you see only incremental changes to its devices and OS's from year to year. IMO LTE is going to be a headache for Apple due to every carrier has its own bands of spectrum. Unless Apple has access to a super-duper chip that can handle8-10 different bands of spectrum, you will not see a universal LTE device. If Apple does go the LTE route, I would think it would be carrier specific and I'm not sure at this point Apple will do that. But with the iPad 3 debuting in two weeks, we'll see.

Yes, very nice looking. I do like how Motorola has toned tone it down and quit butchering the OS. It almost looks acceptable. Not like when it was designed as a social network UI. Moto isn't calling it Motoblur any longer, but I can't find the new name.

Trick question, this whole voice scenario will have to be blown up five years from now when most of the carriers are on VoLTE. It would be sensible if the carriers could hammer out a roaming deal for data now, but we all know that won't happen until the FCC gets involved. With 3 out of 4 carriers and several regionals having LTE by 2013, the majority of the nation will be covered by that footprint with no agreement. This is a train wreck in the making that the FCC will watch happen and say "We should have done something".

Trap door

Here's an interesting question in the vein of the "Chicken or the Egg". What will it take to solve this spectrum dilemma? Rely on the Feds to take years to get around to auctioning spectrum, or will technology step in and command better inefficiencies of spectrum use? Which will be first?

Tourist trap

Never played with a Kindle Fire yet but those who have one seem pretty happy with it. Do you think this new form factor will be successful? Or will it need more capabilities since its a full sized tablet? http://news.cnet.com.../?tag=cnetRiver Amazon taps Foxconn for 10-inch Kindle Fire, says report Foxconn will make a 10-inch Kindle Fire for Amazon, according to a report. If true, this indicates Amazon is targeting the sweet spot of the tablet market. Amazon will consign production of a 10-inch Kindle Fire tablet to Foxconn, according to an Asia-based report. If true, this would mean that Amazon has its sights on a slightly bigger tablet than previous reports have claimed. Shipments of the 10-inch class Fire would begin in the second quarter, according to a report in DigiTimes.

LS2 is withholding payment with Inmarsat under a spectrum cooperation deal. LS2 says Inmersat has failed to to reach certain performance requirements and Inmarsat has filed a "notice of default" against LightSquared. I think LightSquared is running out of cash and getting desparate. What do you guy's think? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/falcone-s-lightsquared-withholds-56-3-million-payment-to-u-k-s-inmarsat.html Philip Falcone’s LightSquared Inc. (SKYT), the U.S. company struggling to gain approval for a wireless service, failed to pay British satellite operator Inmarsat Plc (ISAT) $56.3 million under a spectrum-cooperation accord. Inmarsat issued a notice of default under the companies’ cooperation agreement, giving LightSquared 60 days to remedy the payment, the London-based satellite operator said in a statement today. In a separate statement, LightSquared said that Inmarsat must fulfil certain obligations tied to the deployment of its terrestrial and satellite network and that “several matters” need to be resolved. It didn’t give more details. LightSquared, based in Reston, Virginia, had been making a series of scheduled payments to the British company in line with contractual milestones, Inmarsat said. Inmarsat, the biggest provider of satellite services to the maritime industry, is giving LightSquared access to part of its spectrum. LightSquared, backed by Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund, wants to offer high-speed Internet service to as many as 260 million people using airwaves previously reserved mainly for satellites. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said last week that it would block LightSquared after finding that the wireless venture would disrupt navigation gear. The FCC is preparing to withdraw the preliminary approval it granted last year for the company to build a high-speed network serving as many as 260 million people, Tammy Sun, an FCC spokeswoman, said last week. The FCC’s action is a blow to LightSquared and a setback for Harbinger Capital Partners (SKYT), which has invested $3 billion in the venture

More high end Moto's on Sprint would be a good thing. I really hope Google makes Motorola come through with unlocking its boot loaders when the purchase is complete.

Dog days

That's an interesting theory. I think we who share on these blogs get a little shortsighted about the masses in general.. Just being here shows we want to know more and want to educate ourselves about what is going on with Sprint and the industry as a whole. Most consumers don't know squat or know just enough to be dangerous when they walk into a Sprint store, BB or the Shack and purchase a new phone without knowing the strategic implications of their decision (my Admin Assistant @ work would be a perfect example). I'm positive that any WiMax sales occurring now is because someone truly needs a phone or they fall for what looks cool or any simple variation of a theme. And I'm sure Sprint and store reps are happy to take advantage of the situation. If a customer (or sucker in the retail world) falls into that trap, then they just help Sprint with reducing churn and Clear with a revenue stream although as we discussed earlier, the iPhone is killing Clear since its not WiMax and doesn't qualify for the $10 ransom Sprint must pay Clear. Since I've been a Sprint customer, I've begin to hate this time of year. There usually no news to speak of (although the GNex & LG phone announcement at CES was a surprise) and certainly no info on new releases until we get close to CTIA which now falls in May instead of April. January to April traditionally is a wasteland for information pertaining to Sprint. If it wasn't for the Rollout Updates Robert is providing we would be in for a long boring wait until May.

Unlimited won't last forever, but it will be around several more years. It only needs to be in play long enough until Hesse thinks of another way to differentiate Sprint from the rest.

Agreed, although I don't know how texting falls in this analysis. It's not a call and not really data, so I'm not sure how that will work out unless someone knows better. Once VoLTE is standard though, CDMA/GSM becomes obsolete and spectrum is refarmed to data, so plans will start to reflect that in a format we haven't seen yet, but guaranteed to bring the carriers more money.

If the uprated GNex+ or GSll+ is announced as rumored, I think it will they will be competitive devices at least until the quad-cores come out this fall.

Good news all around and thanks for keeping us up to date. Looking at the responses, you would think Sprint might believe we would want to know whats going on.

I hope the Sprint GNex model has the Qualcomm radio instead of the Chinese knockoff that's in the Verizon version. Phone reception is reported to be inconsistent with whats in it now.

i don't think we'll see a quad-core out until this fall at the earliest, that why the GSlll isn't being announce until this summer. However, I'm sure Verizon is already at the table with the checkbook to get it first and hold it from the rest of us until the 1st of next year. If the GNex or Epic Touch get updated as speculated, then I will probably get one of those when their released, hopefully by May/June.

Not necessarily mobile related but interesting nonetheless. I look at this in the context of Sprints ongoing and hopefully closer relationship with Google and how Chrome and Android can be brought closer together in terms of interoperability, much like Apple is doing with iOS and Mountain Lion. Although web based, this could be what Mozilla is looking to do with bring its possible OS to the mobile world. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57380203-264/faster-chromebooks-to-leapfrog-todays-slowpokes/?tag=fd2010AuxPromo.0