Sprint seems to be enjoying its familiar role as kingmaker, dangling hopes of its massive next generation network deal in front of a widening array of candidates. While it assesses the technology that will underpin its build-out of a national 2.5GHz broadband wireless network in 2007-8, its key criterion will be strong support for multimedia, and the ability to scale up these capabilities to support future, hardly dreamed-of applications.

Sprint, in its quest to take on the Goliaths of US telecoms, Verizon and AT&T, is relying on its ability to create a more advanced, highly differentiated content experience, and is building up key partnerships to that end, notably with the cablecos. Now it is looking to add gaming device manufacturers such as Sony to that list - as those vendors, themselves, aim to broaden the remit of products such as the Playstation Portable from games consoles to all-purpose multimedia portals.

In all this, Sprint is thinking more like a Korean operator than a US one. Earthlink-SKT joint venture Helio may have promised to be first to bring the Korean mobile broadband experience to the US, with its soon-to-be launched MVNO service (which uses the Sprint network), but Sprint will accelerate the trend significantly because of its plentiful supply of spectrum, adding the national 2.5GHz licenses to its existing 3G network.

One benefit of the 2.5GHz holdings - which include far greater bandwidth than Verizon and AT&T have in their own, so-far underused 2.3GHz licenses, with Sprint owning an average of 98MHz of spectrum in each major market, compared to 36MHz in 1.9GHz cellular - is that there is a wide choice of technology optimized for the band. Although most of these options are emerging, and so carry risk, they also give Sprint the opportunity, as the world's largest planned 2.5GHz implementer, to mould the technologies it chooses to suit its particular requirements - as the Korean operators did with the Qualcomm platforms.

So far, its chief technology officer Barry West - top of every network vendor's dinner party list - and its VP of innovative technologies, Ali Tabassi, are coy about the platform that is likely to win the prize, increasing Sprint's ability to make the suppliers dance through hoops in terms of performance, and be flexible on pricing.

Flash-OFDM:

In trial are various flavors of WiMAX, including Samsung's pre-802.16e Wi-Bro technology and WiMAX from Motorola; IPWireless' TD-CDMA network, which has the advantages of spanning the 3G and 2.5GHz bands and coming with a newly created mobile television platform, TDtv; and Flarion's Flash - OFDM, now owned by Qualcomm.

A few weeks ago Sprint was dangling its favors in front of IPWireless, sounding highly
enthusiastic about the company's offering; now it is tantalizing the vendors further with praise for Flash-OFDM. Nextel had carried out the most extensive commercial trial of Flarion's technology prior to its merger with Sprint, but once that occurred, the trial ended and it was assumed Flash-OFDM was out of the running. Now Tabassi is telling analysts that the Flarion technology has, so far, been the most impressive performer among the contenders.

While ownership by Qualcomm might be seen as a negative by some players, given the company's iron control of its technologies, it would actually be a benefit for Sprint, especially in a situation where the operator has the negotiating upper hand. Sprint was one of the original operators that enabled Qualcomm's CDMA to gain traction, and the two companies have worked together closely over the years with, despite some tensions, the balance of the relationship being positive to the cellco. With Qualcomm likely to integrate Flarion into abroader next generation network, which will also incorporate integration with its MediaFLO television platform and the new evolutions of CDMA EV-DO, Sprint would gain a technology with a clear ecosystem and future path, eliminating the risks of working with a start-up, and one with links to its existing network based on EV-DO.

There will also be the option of using one of the 3G technologies in 2.5GHz - either the upcoming multicarrier version of CDMA EV-DO, or even W-CDMA with its growth path to next generation LTE. Though these technologies are on West's trialling list, there has been little feedback on results and it is not likely that W-CDMA/LTE will be considered a serious option, given its costs - since Sprint has no existing investment in the platform - and the carrier's need to acquire "4G" capabilities in a shorter timescale than LTE will achieve.

Sprint's network choices
Source: company investor briefing

Sprint roadmap:

Tabassi says the technology and vendor selection will be made in the last quarter of this year, with market trials in 2007 and full launch, well within the roll-out schedule set by the FCC as the condition of Sprint Nextel keeping their merged 2.5GHz holdings. The plan is to reach 15m citizens in 2008 and 30m by 2011. Sprint is also starting to work on applications to drum up enthusiasm for its plans. Most recently, it offered a service at NASCAR races - events heavily mapped to the Nextel demographic - called FanView. Spectators rented a multimedia handheld device that carried locally broadcast voice, video and data content about the races, delivered over the 2.5GHz spectrum. The FanView device featured telecasts, seven in-car camera channels, direct audio feeds from the racing teams, and radio broadcasts.

This is just a taster of Sprint's aim to get its services well beyond phones and laptops and into embedded consumer devices of all kinds - an ambition that throws the spotlight back on the WiMAX bid for its huge contract, where the main vendors involved, Samsung and Motorola, are also experts in innovative devices. The stakes are high for the vendors involved. Motorola is defending a presence with its largest single customer, Nextel (whose iDEN cellular network the vendor supplies); Qualcomm knows that Sprint is unlikely to use CDMA EV-DO in 2.5GHz, and that this could be taken as a signal by other CDMA operators, and so badly needs to succeed with its OFDM or hybrid network; Samsung sees Sprint as its best chance of a foothold in a truly global network equipment market; and a win or loss for IPWireless will affect the entire future of the company. But of course, the stakes are highest for Sprint itself, as it takes on the daunting task of creating a service sufficiently distinctive and appealing to neutralize the growing might of the giant converged telcos.

This article originally ran in Wireless Watch, a publication of Rethink Research. Reproduced with permission. For information on the weekly Wireless Watch Newsletter and other Rethink Research products and services, click here.