BlackBerry Curve now available through Sprint
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
It's been known for years that some of Sprint Nextel's Direct Connect spectrum causes bouts of interference with public safety equipment, and the FCC got the ball rolling on a plan several years ago for the carrier to swap some airwaves with agencies around the country by June of this year to keep everyone happy. Problem is, some 500 of those agencies still aren't ready to trade, and Sprint has taken issue with the fact that the FCC wants it to meet its end of the bargain by next month anyhow. Nevertheless, a federal appeals court has ruled in the FCC's favor, setting the wheels in motion for a possible massive loss of Nextel coverage on the drop-dead date of June 26 -- but industry analysts aren't too worried. Most seem to be predicting that the FCC will end up extending the deadline by six months or so anyway, so Kevin Martin and his ragtag gang must just love watching carriers sweat. Oh, not to mention a few million Direct Connect customers.
With the comforting knowledge that HTC's lovely new devices are inbound for Sprint, we admit, we're having an awful time working up excitement over the 800w at this point -- but we've got to give all these things a fair shake on the open market before we figure out who's king of the Windows Mobile hill this year. WMExperts claims that Sprint is now targeting July 22 for the grand entrance of Palm's latest Treo, a date that would still jibe with the timeline we've already seen in the wild. The potential launch date also brought with it a handful of new tidbits: Windows Mobile 6.1, integrated GPS, an illuminated keyboard that falls between the Centro's and the 700 series size wise, and it's apparently "very fast." It also seems that Sprint's version will likely be coming in Charcoal Black, a color that would fit in nicely with the carrier's trend of launching dark-ish smartphones. If the Curve is any indication, it's a color that'll suit the device well.
After yesterday's revealing of a sweeping new partnership with Verizon, Qwest took an opportunity during its earnings call today to go into detail on exactly what the deal means. The Baby Bell confirmed that Qwest branding will completely go away -- Verizon devices sold will be Verizon through and through, with no hint of rebranded MVNO action like the old setup with Sprint (which, in some cases, had meant Qwest exclusives like the Fusion). They also say that they're looking forward to implementing Verizon's next-gen (read: LTE) network just as soon as it's available, but really, here's our question: just what would Qwest be implementing, anyway? For all practical purposes, the company's doing nothing more than becoming a glorified authorized Verizon reseller; big wigs on the call said that the terms of the deal are "much, much better" than the old one with Sprint, and considering that they won't actually have to go through the daily grind of running an MVNO, it's no wonder. It's still unclear how Sprint customers are going to be transitioned, but we imagine Sprint proper would be happy to take 'em off Qwest's hands if it came down to it.
It looks like the price was right, because that possible deal mentioned by Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg a while back to supplant Sprint as Qwest's wireless provider of choice has now materialized in the form of a gargantuan five-year deal. From what little has been said so far, it seems that the company might be abandoning the MVNO model it currently uses with Sprint and will simply be marketing Verizon Wireless devices through its website, telesales, and in-store channels, giving customers the option of being billed directly by Big Red (how very kind of them!) or having the charges bundled in with the remainder of their service. Also remaining to be seen is how the transition of Qwest's existing Sprint-based customers -- some 800,000 of them -- would be transitioned, if at all. More details are expected to emerge during its earnings call on Tuesday, and we'd imagine current Qwest wireless customers are on the edges of their seats.

Wow, it looks like someone was listening when we said that Pivot wasn't going anywhere just an hour ago -- Comcast, Time Warner (Engadget's parent company) and Cox have all confirmed to the AP that they've backed out of the quad-play partnership, leaving Sprint alone to awkwardly hang out with Advance / Newhouse, which declined to comment. That must be a fun party. Of course, this also means both of the partnerships Sprint and Big Cable got into have now failed, but that doesn't mean the competition in the space is over: both Time Warner and Cox say wireless is still in the cards for their companies, but Pivot was just too complicated a venture. Comcast hasn't said anything yet, but promised a comment tomorrow sometime between 7AM and 11PM.
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