Sprint Affiliate Sues to Block Clearwire Deal

iPCS is a Sprint PCS affiliate of Sprint Nextel. They are not an MVNO. They operate their network and sell service as if they are Sprint but they are actually iPCS. They exist in about seven states, including Michigan, where I live. They don't even have EV-DO coverage throughout their territory. It's only in a select few cities. They refuse to build outside major cities and have really bad coverage. They're a poor excuse for an affiliate. Sprint needs to take them out.

But I think where they lose is that Clearwire is no Sprint. I could see if it were Sprint's Xohm, but this is going to be set up as a completely separate company so how can they file suit against an investor? Also, what do they offer as far as WiMAX goes?

where do you work mike? I'm actually in an iPCS market, and right now there are 80+ towers in either construction or site acquisition across our Michigan territory. the ipcs advantage over sprint corporate mkts is that our phones are often a lot cheaper and don't need mailin rebates most of the time. plus we have a couple plans that aren't available in corp areas.

what type of plans do you offer that aren't available in corp markets? are there roaming charges?

no roaming, power pack 600 minutes plan.

we were also marketing the 450, 600 and 900 minute plans with the Vision ProPack as a bundle about 4 months before the simply everything plans were announced.

i was hoping they would also come out with a have a family pack between the 700 and 1400 minute plans, like 1000 minutes at $80.

Well, I don't work, I'm in college. LOL. I live in Caro, MI and I go to school in Saginaw, MI, both of which are iPCS areas.

I just don't think they do a good job at building out into rural areas like corporate Sprint has and they also have very, very limited places where EV-DO is. I believe Sprint's entire territory is now EV-DO, except for affiliate areas.

My main point is just that it would be better of if Sprint's network was 100% corporate. That way Sprint could continue to put CDMA panels on the current iDEN towers and not see barriers when it comes to rural areas like iPCS does.

I know the caro area, I work for the Buzz Wireless Sprint stores in the Midland and Fashion Square malls. so i'm guessing you either go to delta or SVSU. I'm a Northwood alum myself.

Yes, I go to SVSU. And I go to the Fashion Square Mall all the time, because it's the closest mall to Caro. I've also been to the Midland Mall too.

well you have a tower going up just outside of caro, one near vassar, sebawing, bad as$, 4 within 15 miles of F'muth... about 70% of the thumb north of i-69 will be covered by iPCS by the end of fall if not sooner, and almost 90 new towers across the state, from battle creek area up to M-55 near cadillac, across to tawas area down through the thumb and back across.

Almost all of it will be EVDO rev0 or revA, and able to use Qchat (direct connect for sprint's CDMA)

What!? No way! That's crazy! To actually have Sprint service in Caro? And 70% of the Thumb? Wow!
I would imagine that they'd be putting a panel on the Nextel tower right in town. That's the only cell phone tower in Caro that allows for more panels. (It's a monopole.)

it's going to be toward the north end of town. so send all your friends and family in to my store and have them sign up for new sprint lines with me as soonas you see that tower finished...

The north end? Well Caro is built kind of on a diagonal, so do you know more of a specific location, or just "north"?

it's going to be a couple miles outside of town

I'm not able to pinpoint a location right now. there's just a large circle centered about a mile and a half north of town. no street labels at all.

So is it going to be a brand new tower do you think? Or are they going to add a panel to a tower? Either way, I believe having the tower outside of town, may not be very wise, especially with the geography our region and the fact that they use 1900 MHz. We are a very rural area and 1900 MHz isn't going to go very far. They would need to put quite a few towers/panels up to cover what AT&T and Thumb Cellular have done.

the 1900 mhz towers sprint uses will cover over a 4 mile radius, which is plenty to cover Caro and most of the populated area around there.

As or the nextel tower that's already out there, I don't know where it is exactly. It probably isn't too far away, though.

I'm not woried about what DeathStar Wireless or TomThmb cellular have constructed because ATT is GSM and thumbkin is a roaming partner that appears to have no plans to make any expansion. In fact, TC is one of tose types of companies that VZW has been snapping up all over the country like rural cellular and sonora in northern CA...

Ah, Okay. Well there are still a lot of hills and trees around, so that's kind of what I mean.

The Nextel tower is right in downtown Caro, you can see where it is if you go to CellReception.com/towers and put in Caro.

Yeah, AT&T and Thumb Celluar are pretty popular here in the thumb. It may be kind of difficult to break into their customer base. A lot of people have Thumb Cellular because of it's CDMA technology being better to penetrate things. AT&T doesn't penetrate much and it has a lot of quality issues and coverage issues around here. But, I do hope Verizon will gobble up TC.

I used to work for Sprint's largest affiliate Alamosa PCS prior to Sprint buying Alamosa out in March 2006. To this date the entire Alamosa footprint lacks EVDO and no cell towers have been put up since 03/06.

Go figure. Sprints buys them out and does nothing.

Excuse me I didn't mean small as in literal size. I mean proportional, as in compared to the rest of the Sprint Network. Anyway more than likely what will happen is that the most that IPCS will do is force Sprint to honor the agreement at least in it's affiliate owned areas. They won't succeed in blocking the entire merger.

right, it's going to end up just like the powersource agreement. but in iPCS's michigan territory, powersource hardly works anyway unless you are in an area that has both cdma 1900 and iden signals. the ic phones don't have a cdma 800 signal to roam with, which a lot of this area does. and I have spoken to no less than 50 people over the last year who went from iden to powersource and then left sprint altogether because they lost phone call coverage from nextel, have no roaming ability from our 800mhz partners, and they had to change their number to a downstate area code.

If sprint had been a little more up front with some of those people, they wouldn't have lost as many.

iPCS sucks!!! they should pony up and sell out to corporate Sprint like they should have 2 years ago!! They create so many problems on fringe areas of the corporate markets. They dont follow all of the agreements that they have will Sprint to a T, and they flat out piss off more customers than not!!
GIVE UP NOW!! AND QUIT TRYING TO MAKE YOURSELVES RELEVANT TO SPRINT!!

I agree with rtk2626. IPCS should just give up. They are running sprints name thru the mud with their poor(and incredibly slow) coverage, as well as hurting sprint's brand consistency. I can't wait until sprint finally buys them out and properly trains employees and then shuts down all of the piss poor buzz wireless stores, like they did to enhanced wireless. i also agree with rtk in saying that the stores(both iPCS and corporate) on the borders of the affiliate market have to go through a lot of hassle with returns and customer care issues.