Why Sprint’s Pivot remains frozen
(A) Cable companies have one of the best IP infrastructures in the carrier space. (B) Cable companies in the US are buying wireless spectrum and it seems wireless is very important to them going forward. Put A and B together and you will have Cable companies in the US utilizing their IP networks for wireless backhaul.
What has that got to do with their relationship with Sprint through the joint venture Pivot? Imagine if a joint Sprint-Comcast customer (Comcast effectively operating as MVNO here utilizing Sprint’s wireless network) used a dual mode phone within a WiFi zone and migrated the call over to IP using Comcast’s FMC server thus bypassing Sprint’s wireless network? That would leave Sprint high and dry. Sprint is apprehensive about the FMC related converged offerings being tested by Cable companies. Basically Sprint is not allowing for dual-mode single-number type of services within this joint venture.
So that is one reason. The other reason is the fact that the partners are still fighting over who owns the customer. To put it bluntly, it seems as if Sprint is trying to get access to cable customers since the mobility aspect (including things like Mobile TV) looks more like Sprint service rather than a joint service. If Sprint allows for dual-mode FMC services, not only will it lose minutes, it will also lose the customer because once Comcast provisions the dual-mode service subscriber in its HLR, it owns the customer. End of story.
Sprint’s Femtocell trial is another issue simply because it is effectively a competitive offering to Pivot. So on one hand Sprint does not allow cable companies to offer FMC converged service but then they explore the converged service themselves with the Femtocell option. I think Femtocell trial is probably what precipitated Pivot’s halt.
Anyway, for cable operators I think Sprint relationship can serve as part of the convergence adoption curve, though I doubt if it was intended that way.
Sprint CFO also mentioned in the conference call that integration is an issue. That probably also holds true. Integrating systems of two operators for things like unified voicemail and all that could be a nightmare. And then … who is going to spend money solving these problems …. So there were some technical challenges as well.
