Sprint loses appeal, must abandon some airwaves by June
Posted by Joe P on May 5, 2008
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.
While the ultimate transaction is a spectrum swap, many public safety channels are not ready to hand over to Sprint. So why does Sprint have to fork over theirs by this deadline?
“That deadline — which was never premised on a synchronized spectrum swap — has not changed,” according to the court’s ruling. “What has changed are the implications of the deadline: it now appears Nextel might have insufficient spectrum come June because numerous … (public safety) licensees won’t be ready to relocate.”
With more than 500 public safety agencies unable to make the switch, Sprint will certainly be in a pickle. Am I missing something in not understanding why they can’t make the swap with the least amount of downtime on both sides? Why make Sprint hand over their spectrum without making a similar provision for public safety agencies?
I guess we’ll find out more as June 26 nears.
And while we’re on the topic of Sprint, the huge rumor, as you might have heard already, is that T-Mobile might be looking to buy them out. Not sure how much stock I put into this kind of report. I suppose it would help T-Mo reach more people. But balancing CDMA, GSM, and iDEN? Can it be done?
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Filed under : Sprint
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