Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Excerpts after the jump… Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Excerpts after the jump… Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. More excerpts after the jump… Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt…We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. More excerpts after the jump… Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Most of the discussion swirling about making paid programming ubiquitous across platforms calls for no additional charges for the consumer. Pay for it once and you get it on TV, broadband or mobile. Most of the payoff for operators would come in lower churn, new subscribers and increased interest in broadband. But that doesn’t mean everything a cable subscriber gets online or on mobile would be free; that’s not the case now when subscribers order pay-per-view movies, for instance. Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts alluded to the possibilities during the opening session of The Cable Show in Washington D.C. when he mentioned the concept “as a great opportunity to find additional revenue, to grow the pot.” The best comparison to what Comcast might do with On Demand Online is what it already does with video on demand: standard content is included and subscribers of premium services Showtime, HBO, Starz and others, can access that content on demand, while some movies, events, etc., are offered as pay VOD. Expand the options to get to the content or find platform-centric parallels, and operators may be able to find that additional revenue. At another session Wednesday afternoon, Time Warner Cable’s Peter Stern suggested a combo solution for raising revenue and alleviating cannibiliazation concerns that the TV Everywhere idea proposed by TWC’s former parent Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). Asked how TWC would handle subscribers with a second home in another operator’s territory who might use their remote broadband access to replace that subscription, Stern reminded the packed room that TWC is already moving toward billing based on how much broadband subscribers use over a base amount: “Assuming we’re able to be successful, the model you describe won’t work. They will find they end up paying on the high-speed online side.” Suddenlink Chairman and CEO Jerry Kent, on the opening panel with Roberts, Cox Communications President Pat Esser and Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR) Chairman Craig McCaw, told moderator William Kennard that he’s all for embracing the internet but is looking for something between the music industry’s ignoring the internet to start and the newspaper industry’s giving it away. Making content available to subscribers who already pay could fit. Kent added, “Some think we should charge extra; I’m not sure about that.” Broadband video is already powering the growth in Comcast’s broadband business, Roberts said, while for the programmers (a category that also includes Comcast), “it represents a new opportunity to try to monetize in this horrific advertising environment.” McCaw, a former cable operator, warned programmers not to take the licensing fees they get for granted: “*ESPN* would be nothing without the cable industry. I remember when they used to pay us to take ESPN.”  Roberts, who quickly picked friend over foe when it comes to the online video sites as befits someone whose company owns video portal Fancast, had some thoughts for broadcasters. “Broadcast television is typically free save for a little thing called retransmission consent.” (That’s when broadcasters ask multichannel operators to pay them for the privilege of carrying their networks.) Roberts said it’s hard for him to imagine why broadcast networks are not making more of an accelerated push into as many platforms as possible.” Then again, we could hear some more along those very lines Thursday when *Disney* CEO Bob Iger and *News Corp*. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch bookend the programming day with keynotes.

Consumers and Businesses Will Have Access to 4G Service Several Times Faster Than 3G

Visit StreetInsider.com at http://www.streetinsider.com/news.php?st=p&id=5323686 for the full story.

See the rest of the story here.

Theflyonthewall.com is Wall Street's specialist in breaking equity news. Veteran traders build a proprietary feed of news that's faster and more relevant than any other source. Try us for free and discover for yourself.

Cost savings cuts both ways.

Rajiv Goel, a former Intel Capital director, pleaded guilty on Monday that he had received money from friend and Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam.

"Although we lived very different lives, we kept in close contact and I received money from him for personal financial needs," Goel said in court. "Over a number of years, he made trades that made me profits."

Goel is a former director in the treasury group of Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) who met Rajaratnam, founder and manager of Galleon Group, about 25 years ago at the Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania.

Goel said that he and Rajaratnam conspired to profit on insider information about Intel Corp. quarterly earnings and Intel Corp. investments in Clearwire Corporation (Nasdaq: CLWR).

"I know it was wrong to give Raj Rajaratnam the information. I gave it to him because of my friendship," said Goel.

A sentencing proceeding was scheduled for May 28 and Goel faces up to 20 years in prison.

By Grant McCoolNEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Intel Capital director pleaded guilty on Monday to fraud in the Galleon insider trading case, telling a New York court that hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam gave him money for personal needs and that he profited from illegal trades.Rajiv Goel, who was...

Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) has decided to speed up its investment in the next-generation (4G) WiMAX venture in 2010. From December 2009, the company has started offering WIMAX services in Dallas, and parts of North Carolina and Hawaii. Under the brand name of “Road Runner Mobile,” this super-fast mobile broadband network supports Internet speed of [...]

(TWC) Time Warner Cable to Ramp Up WiMAX Service

I spent the last few weeks testing a dual mode WiMAX modem from Sprint. The verdict: It's not strong enough to be a wireline replacement, but if I didn't have a contract on Verizon I'd ditch my MiFi and use WiMAX as my primary data connection.

Comcast today reported fourth-quarter and 2009 earnings that showed remarkable subscriber growth in a down economy. But this year could be a turning point for Comcast, which has laid the groundwork for fast, ubiquitous broadband while also trying to avoid becoming a dumb pipe.

The technical term is IEEE mobile Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access 802.16e-2005. The term we found during our research was WiMAX. We knew it wasn’t going to be this simple, and we were right. We also found LTE, which we learned stands for Long Term Evolution. LTE appears to us to be the main competitor to [...]

($VZ) Verizon Communications As Clear As Mud

The technical term is IEEE mobile Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access 802.16e-2005. The term we found during our research was WiMAX. We knew it wasn't going to be this simple, and we were right. We also found LTE, which we learned stands for Long Term Evolution.

LTE appears to us to be the main competitor to WiMAX and is being introduced by the wireless division of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ ) in the United States market in 2010.

The main difference between WiMAX and LTE appears to be speed, with LTE providing faster data speeds at lower cost than WiMax. However we found several wireless analysts that agree that the first devices capable of accessing LTE networks will be laptop computers equipped with small modems, known as dongles, and that LTE ready smart phones and other products will not be available until at least 2011, but more likely, not until 2012.

At the moment there appears to be no clear leader in WiMAX technology, however Clearwire Corporation (Nasdaq: CLWR ) appears to us to be the front runner at the present time. But even Clearwire has put itself in a position to move to LTE over the longer term.

This whole WiMAX versus LTE thing sounded like another VHS versus BETA, or HD DVD versus Blu-ray to us, but since we were asked about Clearwire Corporation we grudgingly forged ahead.

In the end to those of that simply want to make a cell phone call, the technology behind the call, will come down to price, and at the moment, price is as unpredictable as which technology will emerge the leader.

Basis
Financial information contained in this report is based on the company's most recent Form 10-K filing for fiscal year ending December 31, 2008 as filed with the with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 25, 2009, as amended on April 13, 2009.

What They Do
The company offers a suite of advanced high-speed Internet services to consumers and businesses. As part of a multi-year network build-out plan, the company's 4G service, called CLEAR™, will be available in major metropolitan areas across the U.S., and bring together a combination of speed and mobility via the company's open all-IP network.

Combined with significant spectrum holdings, the company provides network capacity to deliver next-generation broadband access.

Strategic Investors
Strategic investors in the company include Google, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG ), Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC ) , and Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA ) .

Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S ) is the majority stock holder, controlling 51.1% of the ownership interests in the company.

For a detailed explanation of the company's structure and formation, please click here .

Short-Term Investment
With a recent close of $6.77, and first resistance of $9.42, the stock currently has an upside reward of 39%. Conversely, with first support at $6.36, the stock currently has a downside risk of 6%. This tells us that a short-term trade at this point may not be a bad choice.

However, in reviewing the current trend line we note that the while the recent price movement appears to be downward with shares in the oversold category, the overall short-term trend for the stock appears to be upward.

Long-Term (5 Year Hold) Investment
Simply put, the company ended fiscal 2008 cash rich, with $1.67 a share cash on hand, $2.63 a share of marketable securities, and debt of $1.89, giving the company a debt to cash ratio of 0.44, an outstanding position for companies in the wireless communications industry.

Additionally, the company's fiscal 2008 working capital ratio was over 18, the company's quick ratio was over 18, and the company's cash ratio was over 18, all extremely positive.

Certainly would like to see free cash flow improve from ($1.47), but realize that with the current move to WiMAX, it may be sometime before that happens.

We also note that the first 3 quarters of fiscal 2009 have seen changes in the company's financial position, with cash on hand falling to $0.66 per share, marketable securities remaining high at $2.04 per share, and debt remaining almost unchanged at $1.95 per share.

Final Thoughts
We realize that fortunes have been made over the past 10 years gambling on one technology over another, and believe that for long-term investors, this will simply be another of those gambles, a gamble we at Wax Ink are simply not willing to take at this time.

Wax Ink

For the Clearwire Wax Ink Raw Value worksheet, please click here .

Guest: Michael "Mish" Shedlock opens our eyes to the real economic issues that are causing such problems.

Schaeffer's Colleen King takes a look at activity on the Street ahead of the market open

Clearwire Corporation (Public, NASDAQ:CLWR) shares had a great day yesterday jumping $1 after news the Sprint (S) deal was being revisited.  Today, the thrill is gone and shares of CLWR are down 17% and falling right back to under $13 a share.

Today, Clearwire Chief Executive Ben Wolff made it official and said the two companies have made progress on terms for a roaming deal for their high-speed wireless networks based on WiMax technology.  Wolff went on to say that Sprint and Clearwire are also working on collaborating in other areas, but did not give details. He declined to comment on recent reports speculating that Sprint and Clearwire were looking to merge their WiMax assets with investments from outside companies.

The market could care less, dropping CLWR hard and as shares fall we get closer to the $10.29 52-week low.  Fellow Masters, should Clearwire shares continue to fall, we've got ourselves a buying opportunity on our hands.  Wolff said today that Clearwire's preliminary revenue for the fourth quarter coming in at $45 million and a total subscriber base of 394,000, including domestic and international markets.

Don't forget that Clearwire's IPO price was $25 last year and now shares are trading at half the value.  Back on Jan 3rd Sid Parakh of McAdams Wright Ragen said that Clearwire is not being valued appropriately, and revised the company's price target up to as much as $28 a share.

Parakh wrote that if you added up only the value of Clearwire's spectrum -- or airwaves that it owns -- it would have an estimated value of about $11 to $25 a share.

Why is it undervalued?

Tom Dorsey and Tammy DeRosier - Odds and Ends: From Cinco de Mayo to NASDAQ

Of the 105 IPOs from October 20, 2006 through March 9, 2007, the average gain was 16% For the 10 companies in the tech sector, the average gain was 12%
Going into their IPOs Four were profitable AeroVironment (AVAV) IPG Photonics (IPGP) Opnext (OPXT) and Mellanox Technologies (MLNX)

Six were unprofitable Clearwire (CLWR) Guidance Software (GUID) Isilon Systems (ISLN) Salary.com (SLRY) Sourcefire (FIRE) and Switch and Data (SDXC)