Sprint, America’s third largest operator that’s currently running around Washington D.C. like a chicken without a head trying to stop AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile, just sent out a press invite for an event that they’re calling “Sprint’s Strategy Update”. It’s due to take place on October 7th at 09:30 in New York City and the only agenda given is “Presentation by Senior Management, Q&A Session”. Considering Sprint has already said that they’re going to transition Clearwire from WiMAX to TDD-LTE, we’re wondering what exactly Sprint has up their sleeves? Rumors suggest that Sprint is in the process of acquiring Clearwire after it’s become painfully obvious that the joint venture approach to rolling out a nationwide network isn’t quite working as planned. There’s also a possibility that Sprint could announce that they’re going to be getting the iPhone 5, but why would you need to host a “Strategy Update” to announce that?
If we could have anything we want from Sprint, it would be an announcement that they’re transitioning away from CDMA/WiMAX and going full blown GSM/LTE. If Bell and Telus, two Canadian operators, can switch from CDMA to GSM, then there’s no reason that Sprint can’t either. The benefits are huge, including support for a wider range of devices, cheaper equipment since GSM based infrastructure is readily available and has gone through many iterations so you know it’s bulletproof, and let’s not forget that it’ll be easier for mobile enthusiasts to import unlocked devices, pop their SIM card in, and boom, it works.
Unlikely to occur would be Sprint announcing that it’s going to kill unlimited data or Virgin Mobile, their prepaid brand. If they do that then you can expect the backlash from consumers to be so strong that they’ll lose quite a few numer of customers.
What do you think will happen? It’s only 5 weeks away, so it’s not like it’ll be too long of a wait!