Sprint Archives - Serious Startups

Sprint Becomes Latest Corporate Sponsor For Up Global

Sprint, the third largest wireless carrier in the United States, has signed on as the newest sponsor of Up Global, the organization formed when Startup America and Startup Weekend joined forces last month.

When Startup America was originally formed, it was decided by chairman Steve Case and the other entities involved that they were going to see what kind of disruption and innovation they could shake up across the country in three years. As the organization began to approach that third year, they wanted to continue to impact the Startup America regions and push further.

That’s why on May 22nd it was announced that the two organizations would merge. Startup Weekend is the organization that promotes and ignites innovation, startups, and entrepreneurship through 54 hour hackathon-style events. To date Startup Weekend has done over 600 events in over 300 cities and over 100 countries.

Startup Weekend has now branched out a bit. They are the organization behind the weekly Startup Digest, a curated list of startup events in cities across the country typically curated by the local startup community leaders. Over the last two years they’ve also started doing vertical oriented Startup Weekend events like Startup Weekend EDU and a maker’s edition of Startup Weekend. With all of the various touchpoints for Startup Weekend, they were a natural partner for Startup America and had already collaborated with Startup America for Startup Weekend Next.

Startup Weekend, Startup America, and now Up Global have been attracting some of America’s largest corporations as sponsors for their entrepreneurial efforts. Current Up Global partners include Coca Cola, Google, Microsoft, Dell, The Case Foundation, and The Kauffman Foundation.

On Monday it was announced that Sprint, the Overland Park, KS-based wireless carrier, was signing on as Up Global’s latest sponsor. Sprint is no stranger to innovation. They were the first wireless carrier to host a developer conference, they’ve supported local startup initiatives in the Midwest, and keep open channels for developers and startups looking to utilize their network and devices for their software and companies.

“The move to team with Sprint is a result of a shared vision for the necessity of entrepreneurship and stronger communities built around innovation. Like us, Sprint understands that the future of our economy rests largely on the shoulders of entrepreneurs and new businesses. We’re excited to create more meaningful impact with the support of such a forward-thinking company,” Marc Nager, UP Global CEO, said in a statement.

“Sprint recognizes that corporate involvement is important to the success of any entrepreneurial or startup ecosystem,” said Kevin McGinnis, Vice President of Product Platforms at Sprint. “Our UP Global relationship enables Sprint to bring new resources to Kansas City and also extend support on a national scale. In addition, it allows Sprint visibility to high-growth technology startups across the country that we may not be able to identify through our more traditional VC and business development efforts.”

You can find out more and join Up Global here at up.co

Virginia Startup: LightSquared Says We’re Still Not Dead Yet, Appoints New CEO

Lightsquared, the disgraced Northern Virginia startup that was once trying to deploy a terrestrial 4G/LTE network has appointed Doug Smith as their new CEO and Chairman of the board. LightSquared was once an esteemed satellite communications provider. What went wrong was a story that ran for about a year in the mobile tech media.

LightSquared was working to deploy a 4G/LTE network on bands that were originally used for GPS. There was still fair amounts of GPS traffic on the LightSquared bands and LightSquared was causing interference with those GPS radios. As the company went to work on the 4G/LTE network they were operating on a conditional permit from the FCC which required that they find ways to circumvent the interference caused by LightSquared’s equipment on GPS radios.

In February of this year it was lights out for LightSquared. “NTIA … has now concluded that there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time,” the FCC said in a statement. “Consequently, the commission will not lift the prohibition on LightSquared.”

Through all of this LightSquared had inked partnerships with some of the nation’s wireless carriers. Reports in June of 2011 suggested Sprint had a deal with LightSquared for 15 years and valued at over $20 billion dollars. Leap Wireless, the parent company of Cricket, also had a deal with LightSquared. Luckily the Sprint deal was contingent on FCC approval of LightSquared’s plans.

On February 22, 2012 LightSquared laid off 45% of it’s 330 employee workforce. Earlier in that same week they defaulted on a $56 million dollar payment on a note held by British satellite partner Inmarsat.

Fast forward to Tuesday of this week and LightSquared has installed a new CEO and Chairman of the Board.

Smith told theverge.com that LightSquared “remains committed to working with all stakeholders to find an equitable resolution to the regulatory challenges that the company has faced this past year,” and that it “can provide the American public with both a protected and robust GPS system while enabling LightSquared to offer consumers and businesses more choice and a lower priced 4G wireless alternative they need and deserve.”

We’ll have to see how long this life lasts.

Linkage:

Source: TheVerge

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Verizon Continues LTE Domination, Adding 28 Markets On Thursday

Verizon Wireless has announced that their 4G/LTE rollout continues. Thursday they’ll throw the LTE switch on for 28 new markets and expand their coverage in 11 existing markets. They are by far the market leader with 4G/LTE which has been implemented or announced for all four US carriers.

AT&T has also been expanding their 4G/LTE footprint, but not quite at the pace of rival Verizon Wireless.

Sprint has announced that six cities will have 4G/LTE speeds in the middle part of this year. From what we’ve heard from several sources, those cities could be lit up next month.

As for Verizon Wireless, here are the new cities getting 4G/LTE Thursday. As with all of their other market roll outs, you should check your phones today as they tend to turn it on a few days before the official date for testing.

Houma/Thibodaux and Lake Charles, La.; Hyannis/Mid-Cape, Mass.; Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, Mich.; Biloxi/Gulfport/Pascagoula and Oxford, Miss.; Atlantic City/Toms River, N.J.; Dickinson and Williston, N.D.; Ashtabula, Bucyrus and Defiance, Ohio; Eugene/Springfield, Ore.; Lancaster, New Castle, Northern Cambria County, Oil City/Franklin, Somerset and York, Pa.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Mitchell, S.D.; Paris, Texas; Burlington/Northern, Vt.; Fredericksburg, Harrisonburg, Martinsville and Staunton/Waynesboro, Va.; and Sheridan, Wyo.

These are the 11 markets that are getting their 4G/LTE service enhanced:

Denver, Colo.; Dover, Del.; Fort Myers and Lakeland, Fla.; Hagerstown, Md.; Canton, Lima, Mansfield, Toledo and Youngstown/Warren, Ohio; and Erie, Pa.

That brings Verizon Wireless to 258 markets. As you can see from the graphic above Verizon Wireless is well underway with bringing their entire 3G footprint to 4G.

source: Verizon Wireless via Phandroid

Washington DC Startup: LightSquared Files For Bankruptcy After Botched 4G/LTE Plan

Many of you know the sad story of Lightsquared, a wireless broadband startup located in the suburbs of Washington DC.

LightSquared was an offshoot startup founded by wireless pioneer Philip Falcone. The company had a firm background in satellite communications under two former names, American Mobile Satellite Corporation and Mobile Satellite Ventures.

It was LightSquared’s intention to take frequencies that had been located near bands used for government and military GPS and use them for next generation 4G/LTE services. They had actually carved out a huge deal to be the 4G/LTE provider for Sprint, the nation’s third largest carrier which also has roots in the same DC suburb of Reston Virginia from their NexTel days.

After months and months of testing and appearance after appearance in front of the FCC the FCC finally ruled in February that “there was no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time.”

The Sprint deal immediately fell apart after that announcement and a large number of LightSquared employees were laid off.

Well one more nail has been put in the LightSquared coffin as the company filed for bankruptcy protection. LightSquared CEO Marc Montanger told the Washington Post that the company hasn’t given up on it’s plan and the bankruptcy protection was to give them some breathing room.

However, at this time they may not have any large scale customers left. Sprint has resorted back to their own 4G/LTE rollout in conjunction with Clearwire for which they own 50% of. T-Mobile has announced their own 4G/LTE strategy which will be funded through their parent company Deutsche Telekom and some of the nearly $4 billion dollars in break up money and considerations from the failed AT&T/T-Mobile merger last year.

source: Washington Post

Confirmed: Sprint Nexus NOT AOSP

Questions have been raised since the Galaxy Nexus landed on Verizon which/what is AOSP and what isn’t. Well just now, Jean-Baptiste Queru just took to Google+ to explain that the upcoming Sprint LTE version isn’t going to be AOSP.

The short answer is: the Sprint Galaxy Nexus is not supported in the Android Open Source Project.

The long answer: the release process for the Spring Galaxy Nexus is similar to that of the non-yakju variants of the GSM Galaxy Nexus (e.g. yakjuxw, yakjuux, yakjudv…), which makes that device similarly impossible to support in AOSP. There are no source files, no proprietary hardware-related binaries and no factory images available for the Sprint Galaxy Nexus. In addition, since it’s a CDMA device, it would probably be limited by the usual CDMA licensing issues that have been affecting the other CDMA devices.

#CES2012 Intel, Ultrabooks, Isis, and Gemalto: is this the year of NFC?

Our good friend Sylvie Barak was quoted on the Gemalto blog

Intel demos NFC on an ultrabook: tap your credit card on your laptop touchpad to pay. #AWESOME #CES #eet_CES

Personally I don’t see making payments with a laptop being an option that many people would adopt. Bringing the ability for retailers, small businesses, or the average consumer to accept payments via built-in NFC hardware is an entirely different matter. We have already begun to witness the downfall of the traditional payment options and watched as first PayPal then Square knocked down the payment barriers.

With Google Wallet and Isis using NFC payments and PayPal by phone at Home Depot stores (without NFC) and NFC payments in Sweden it is clear we have almost arrived at a new paradigm in the ability to accept payments. When your smartphone can act as a terminal for both positive and negative cash flow, without any additional hardware, the benefits will market themselves.

Last year I heard over and over “2011 is the year of NFC (in the U.S.)” beginning at CES. I was not clear on why people were making that statement at the time. If I remember correctly, there were no high-profile devices announced in Las Vegas last year. The Nexus S had been announced in November the previous year, sure, but that was it. There was extremely limited NFC functionality for the end-user at the time.

FCC To Lightsquared: We Need More GPS Testing

A few months back Sprint and Lightsquared announced a $9 billion dollar network hosting deal where Sprint would use Lightsquared’s LTE network to deliver 4G/LTE to their customers, in the same manner in which they use Clearwire’s WiMax service for their current 4G.

One of the caveats in the deal was that LightSquared needed to win over the support of the FCC. The spectrum that LightSquared currently holds interferes with GPS services.
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