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We’ve spent a lot of time in this space discussing T-Mobile’s Hotspot @Home service. It’s a consumer boon, enabling savvy T-Mobile subscribers to ditch their landline service, sometimes reducing the charge for home calling from $30 to $10. A similar technology has been in development for quite a while, and made some noise last summer after T-Mobile’s Hotspot announcement, and then again this year at CTIA. It appears Sprint will debut it on July 15 with their Airave router.

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Over the past few months, Sprint has made it clear that turning the company around won’t happen overnight. In fact, just over a month ago they were saying that the turnaround was in the “third inning.” So maybe we’ve headed to the top of the fifth now, where the game is just a half-inning away from being official. This is good news for the nation’s No. 3 carrier, as rumors spread that AT&T and Verizon are seeing fewer number ports from former Sprint subscribers.

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When T-Mobile introduced prorated ETFs on Monday, they became the third of the Big Four to reduce the fees over time. True, their plan isn’t quite as nice as those offered by AT&T and Verizon. But it’s better than paying $200 four months before your contract is up. Still, it could be worse. It could always be worse, because you can be Sprint. The nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier still hasn’t introduced its own early termination fee policy. They plan to during 2008, as they said last november and reiterated recently.

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Over the past week, I’ve been asking anyone who might have an answer what will happen to Sprint come June 26, this Thursday, when it has to abandon a portion of its airwaves. Last week, the company petitioned the FCC for an extension. On Friday it was granted. Sprint now has another 30 days to shove off.

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If there are two things I love writing about, it’s baseball and Sprint. Baseball for love of the game, Sprint for love of the “what did they do now?” factor. The company, as we all know, continues to bleed subscribers, much to the delight of their competitors. The Washington Post sat down with the embroiled company’s CEO Dan Hesse to talk about what Sprint his doing, and how it’s going to take a while. And yes, Hesse said that the company was in the third inning of their rebuilding phase. But it seems like Sprint is playing like the Yankees right now, so it could still be a long game.

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It’s the oldest line in the book: Give me time, I can change. Sometimes it’s a sincere overture, sometimes it’s a crock. So what does it mean when Sprint says it? I’m not quite sure. But CEO Dan Hesse has said that turning the ship around won’t happen today, tomorrow, next month, or even next quarter. So what are shareholders to think of this? Essentially, Hesse is saying that they’ll be losing money until (at least) the end of this year. But please, keep your money with us, because it’ll pay off in the long run. With so much at stake, it’s tough to decide what to believe.

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I would not want to be Sprint right now. Seems the company just can’t catch a break. The latest in their series of misfortunes comes in the form of a federal appeals court ruling. It upholds the FCC’s deadline of June 26 for Sprint to abandon airwaves to be used by public safety agencies. The company claims that failure to extend the deadline would “cripple the network.” So it will be interesting to see what happens once the calendar flips to June 26.

Read the rest of Sprint loses appeal, must abandon some airwaves by June…

Big ol’ AT&T and Sprint have been at it lately. It’s a bit of a mess, actually, and not the easiest issue to grasp, since neither company is supplying the specifics of their agreement. But the quick version is that AT&T agreed to certain roaming rates with Sprint when the former took over BellSouth in 2006. Sprint is taking a very liberal interpretation of this agreement, saying that “it can take any contract it, or one of its subsidiaries, had with AT&T or one of its operating units, and adopt it in any of the 22 states AT&T operates in.” That is, they can expand the original agreement. Of course, AT&T disagrees with that interpretation.
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Last summer, I can’t tell you how many news alerts I saw talking about Verizon and Sprint strengthening their EV-DO network with Revision A. I then heard how fast the network can be, and got real excited, because I knew I was getting a smartphone sooner or later. But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that no, Verizon and Sprint handsets don’t operate on Rev. A. They operate on Rev. 0. That high-speed Rev. A was reserved for laptop cards, an area which the two companies are trying to expand. Sprint, though, has announced a handset that will work on the Rev. A network.
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So with Sprint faltering lately — even with their announcement of an unlimited plan — could they be a buyout target? It’s strange to consider that, seeing as they’re the No. 3 wireless telecommunications company in America. However, they could fall from that perch rather quickly. They’re predicting losses of 1.2 million customers in the first quarter this year, which is simply no good for a company of their size. So if things don’t get better in the second or third quarters, what is Sprint to do? Not that it’s a certainty, but the Wall Street Journal’s Heidi Moore explores the possibility of a Verizon buyout.
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