http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/01/12/what-will-sprint-announce-on-february-7th/ Sprint Iphone? Doubt it but it'd be awesome to have Unlimited data on the 69.99 plan.
I've heard that too but I don't think it'd be very smart.. Last time they merged with a competitor using a different technology (iDen net work for Nextel) it didn't exactly work out. Sprint plans to shutdown Nextel completely by 2013
Hope it's an Evo sucessor. My contract with T-Mobile is up around that time and need a new killer phone with 4G.
What that invite should have said... Sprint - along with master douchebag and world record jackass David Blaine - will show you the impossible is possible, even for an a*hole.
If it is a Sprint Iphone, I hope their version is 4G capable. Announcing the Iphone won't stop people from buying Verizon's a couple of days later, unless they start selling them immediately.
Actually I didn't read the flyer before I posted. Reading that leads me to believe it probably isn't an iPhone. If it is they're doing something different with Apple. Who knows?
This Blackberry runs a completely different OS from what they have on their phones now. It's actually pretty cool. I think they are likely to announce a new set of pricing plans, probably favoring smartphones/tablets/computers; there will be some WiMAX-related announcement in there, and perhaps an Evo successor and/or maybe even a Galaxy Tab 2 with 4G. I think the chances of an iPhone are minuscule at best. What I don't expect is anything WebOS-based since all that stuff is coming down 2 days later on the 9th. Of course, they could just shock the world and announce that they are merging with T-Mobile and transitioning everything to LTE. That move makes sense to me. Yes, the Nextel merger failed, but that didn't make sense -- I don't know what they were planning to do with all those iDEN towers. With T-Mobile they will establish a huge GSM subscriber base and it will only help with the long term move to LTE, since WiMAX is obviously not going to be viable as a long-term strategy at this point.
If they do merge, Tmobile is at 33 million customers, Sprint at 48.. it's going to be hard to transition 81 million total customers to either GSM or CDMA and eventually transition everyone to LTE. I think it'd be disastrous, and very costly to maintain 3 networks (iden until 2013). They already outsourced their network maintenance to Ericcson..
It wouldn't make any sense to migrate anybody to GSM or CDMA. But when LTE becomes mainstream in a couple of years, it won't matter anyway. They'll be rid of iDEN, and there will just be one network that matters. Traditional voice services will be phased out in favor of LTE VoIP.
Yeah, that totally makes sense but I mean at the moment, it will be extremely costly to maintain 3 networks. Honestly, if you want to create a huge national network, Spint should merge with Verizon, now that'd be some AMAZING combined coverage but I'm sure it'd create a huggeeee monopoly. I read somewhere that at the moment Sprint plans on turning those iDEN towers into CDMA. However, you could make Sprint and Tmobile work if they start making dualband phones..
Well well well, what do we have here ... http://connectedplanetonline.com/3g4g/news/2011-Predictions-Sprint-becomes-the-newest-LTE-operator/ Multimode chipsets! Maybe I wasn't so far off the mark after all. Well not the merger part obviously, but at least as far as LTE and the future of the iDEN network is concerned. I had forgotten that the iDEN frequency band was 800MHz -- it all makes perfect sense. And who knows... we could see similar chips in phones as well. Why should I have to choose between GSM & CDMA & LTE & WiMAX? Why not have it all? (OK, maybe that's pushing it.)
