Sprint CEO Says WiMAX Is Their 4G Strategy, Period

Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, said recently of the company, "Our 4G strategy is WiMAX, full stop." Of course I had no idea what "full stop" meant when I read it, so I had to look it up, and of course it's just another way of saying "period," as in the mark at the end of this sentence. That means that the ONLY plan Sprint plans on enacting for their 4G strategy is WiMAX. The WiMAX interface was the only interface available at the time when Sprint first had the opportunity to make the move to 4G, and according to Hesse, "it was perfect with the spectrum we owned [2.5GHz.]"

Sprint also merged its spectrum with Clearwire which now provides the 4G pipe. Then of course, there's the LTE trials run by Clearwire (during which they achieved a speed of 90 Mbps down, which is pretty neat. "We have so much spectrum that we decided to do tests so in case we have multi-modal phones with other air interfaces, we can add LTE on top of WiMAX and run both networks," he said. "We have not announced a decision to put LTE anywhere in our network, and we are not intending to."

Continuing on spectrum, Hesse said, "The greatest single asset Clearwire has, more than any other [wireless] company is the spectrum it owns, and it is its greatest competitive advantage." On the news September of this year that Clearwire might be selling some spectrum to T-Mobile, Hesse has doubts, "My own view is that they won't be doing that." Clean and clear.

Then there's the eventual shutdown of other networks: "2G will eventually come to an end. CDMA will come to an end. GSM will come to an end and iDEN will come to an end," Hesse said. "Over time, as fewer customers are using our 2G networks, we can use that spectrum for the CDMA/EVDO network." And the crushing fingers of the gods did collect all the souls of those who would enjoy a faster phone connection. Repent now.

[Via GigaOM]