Wednesday, March 26, 2008

NCN Telco: What a relief to see Sprint (NYSE:S) bounce today

NCN Telco pinged me this AM:

What a relief to see Sprint (NYSE:S) bounce today... I still don't like the fact that S is trying to deploy Wi-Max but if it.

Me: Think the tower operators move on this?

It might be slightly positive for the tower companies but remember S has a ton of radio towers inherited from Nextel and pre-merger Sprint. Also recall wi-max allows for wider propagation of radio signals than PCS in 1.9 GHz... so less radio towers are required... I would say barely positive to none for the tower companies... I think Sprint's thinking on Wi-Max is as follows...

Nationwide spectrum used for Wi-Max deployment was purchased for pennies way back in the 1990s... less than a few hundred million... vs. what VZ and ATT spent for 700MHz... so the savings amount to billions... So those billions saved could go towards buliding a nationwide wi-max infrastructure... now introduce suckers from cable and Intel to throw in the necessary capital... it's a win-win for Sprint... The only caveat is no other global carrier will be using wi-max besides Sprint... that is a no no...

Me: Who's gonna supply the tech? MOT? It's certainly not going to be ALVR.

I think Intel, Motorola, ... not too sure

The rest of the world will be on a WCDMA/HSDPA standard so why go with wi-max... that's sort of been the argument metioned by the analysts.

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