By Kim Hart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 17, 2007
Barry West has heard his share of static.
It has been his job to manage the difficult technical integration of Sprint and Nextel for the past two years. As chief technical officer, first for Nextel and now for the combined company, he has had to wrestle with problems with Nextel's network that have caused millions of customers to leave. He has also had to move Nextel's service off airwaves that interfered with those of public safety agencies.
And now, he's the chief architect of the company's future. Sprint said yesterday it may spend as much as $5 billion over three years, up from its earlier estimate of $3 billion, to build a high-speed network it is calling "Xohm," using a technology called WiMax.
The investment has drawn criticism from some analysts and investors, who say the company should instead be working to improve its current networks. Sprint, however, says the WiMax network will connect customers to the Internet twice as fast as current cellular networks, an improvement the company hopes will help it regain ground it has been losing to competitors.
Last week, Sprint announced a net gain in monthly customers for the first time in several quarters. However, the cost of acquiring those customers, combined with lingering merger costs and WiMax start-up expenses, caused Sprint's second-quarter profit to plummet 95 percent.
Yesterday, Sprint invited analysts and investors to Vienna to see the products associated with its WiMax network. Sprint also unveiled a new service that will extend Nextel's walkie-talkie-like service to customers using Sprint's network.
Following are excerpts from an interview with West:
Q What will consumers be able to do with WiMax that they can't already do with their cellphones?
A The cellphone has evolved to become very complicated . . . with cameras in them and MP3 players in them. What we really want is all that functionality but in a high-class product, not something that's just a mixture of a lot of things that's very complex to operate. If you can imagine the functionality of the [Apple] iPhone with great access to the Internet, that's the kind of thing you'll be able to do. . . . The experience you get with a Blackberry is a great e-mail service, but it's not a great Web experience. But imagine having a device that does great e-mail, and with which I can literally see my family in live pictures and video. . . . It's the sort of thing we'll be able to do at an affordable rate. That type of functionality is what we'll be taking for granted in a few years' time.
Why did Sprint choose WiMax for its next-generation network?
We spent a lot of time researching the technologies. . . . I've always insisted that my technology team not become religious about technology. . . . You have to go for what delivers the best experience at the lowest cost so you can deliver value to your shareholders. . . . We looked at which technology would give us a global ecosystem that would support a new business model. That's the most important thing about Xohm. It's a new business model.
Today you also unveiled a new walkie-talkie service called Nextel Direct Connect that is designed to bridge the two networks. How will that be affected by past problems with the Nextel service?
I think this is a big day for us, being able to show push-to-talk on [Sprint's] platform with the same performance as the [Nextel] network. It's no small feat.
Why did you decide to use the Nextel brand, even after problems with Nextel network? Was there a concern that the perception of past problems would carry over?
No. Trying to do it the other way and produce a new push-to-talk brand would be really heavy lifting. Nextel is a verb, particularly in landscaping and construction industries. . . . This is absolutely the best way to secure that base of customers for a long time to come.
What is Sprint doing to invest in its current network?
This year we spent between $6-and-$7-billion on our current network. A lot of that has been in preparation of the retune of the Nextel network. But a lot of it was to increase our coverage. Obviously coverage is one of those things we have to keep investing in. As we become more successful with our customers, we have to invest in capacity. But the [WiMax] network inherently has so much capacity that we're not going to have to invest in capacity for a number of years.
What is Sprint's largest technical challenge at this point?
Since the merger, we've been facing a number of technical issues. Preparing the networks for the transition of customers from [Nextel] to [Sprint], building up the network so it will be robust enough for the [spectrum move], and addressing some of the coverage issues we had. At the same time, we had two companies with disparate billing systems and disparate back-office systems that we had to merge. . . . That has been the biggest challenge.
What impact has the iPhone had on Sprint's business?
I think the iPhone is the way Internet devices are going to go. . . . There was a lot of buzz about it, so we did see some activity where people left us. But that activity hasn't been a major drain on our customer migrations. . . . You're going to see those kinds of iconic products on the WiMax network almost from day one. The network just lends itself to that form and functionality. Simplification is really important, and you're going to see that on WiMax devices.
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