Summary
1. Manufacturers buy other vendors for technology. 2. It would be hard to come up with another case in which a service provider purchased another carrier just for that purpose – in this case, push-to-talk. 3. At least indirectly, Sprint will continue to pay the price for this blunder well into the future.
Analysis
We suggested back in 2006 that the only real reason that Sprint wanted Nextel was for push-to-talk. It is hard to describe how much the inherent disadvantages of the marriage between Sprint and Nextel so outweighed the only overrated advantage. On the one hand, there was the cost to run, support, and maintain two disparate networks. On the other, there was a gain of a technology, which only provided a short-term edge in what was already approaching a saturated market. And Sprint totally ignored the inferior quality of the voice component on the Nextel phones.
It is worth noting that Sprint’s recent release on huge expenditures on rebanding in the future was not too long before the nomination of the FCC chairman. The service provider would obviously like to avoid fines. It appears that Sprint dragged its feet as much as possible on this matter.
