Technology Choice Failure

From the WSJ:
Sprint Nextel Corp. posted a wider third-quarter loss as subscribers continued to leave the mobile-phone service provider for other carriers despite the launch of some new handsets.
The number of subscribers slipped 1% from the prior quarter to 48.3 million. The company lost a net of 545,000 wireless subscribers, including 801,000 customers on contracts, putting the total decline in the last eight quarters at about 7.8 million.
By contrast, rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless said in the past week they added two million and 1.2 million total customers during the quarter, respectively.
Sprint, the third-largest U.S. provider cellphone services, said Thursday its loss widened to $478 million, or 17 cents a share, from $326 million, or 11 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 9% to $8.04 billion.
Churn, the rate of post-paid turnover, was 2.17%, up from 2.05% in the second quarter and above the 2.15% of a year earlier. The figures are still well above those of rivals.
Wireless revenue fell 8%, and average monthly revenue per user, a key metric for wireless companies, was flat in the post-paid segment. Wireline revenue dropped 10% on continued voice and data declines.
In an effort to keep customers, Sprint Nextel has added the Hero touch-screen phone, which runs on Google Inc.'s Android software, to complement the Palm Inc. Pre smart phone which Sprint sells exclusively.
Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse, who has repeatedly said the company's subscriber losses will stabilize, said Sprint's efforts to beat competitors on price are gaining some traction with new customers, saying the company posted its best quarter in several years for gross additions, or subscriber growth before disconnects.
"We had some successes in the third quarter but we still have much progress to make," he said on a conference call.
Sprint has suffered from high turnover rates in recent years, prompting the company to work on improving customer service and push prepaid plans such as those at its Boost Mobile unit. In July, the company doubled down on the fast-growing but highly competitive prepaid mobile phone market with a $483 million acquisition of Virgin Mobile USA Inc.

Remember when Toshiba was pushing for the adoption of HD-DVD? Remember how screwed all those people were that went out and bought  a bunch of HD-DVD's and the players?
Well, Sprint is apparently like one of those people. It's no secret that they are endorsing and pumping what money they can into the 802.16m WiMAX technology. What surprises me is why they chose this path.
What confuses me is that anyone with a reasonable knowledge of wireless communications, and the ability to use Wikipedia.com would make this choice given the available options for future technologies and the existing implementations of the new technologies in working environments.

It is a well known fact that WiMAX connectivity is not exactly solid when connected to a moving handset. Now, this is great for people in rural areas looking to connect to that tower on the mountain. Unfortunately, Sprint needs to tap into a market that has population density in order to grow. This is more accurately known as a city. Cities have walls, and doors, and buildings. WiMAX is a radio wave, which can both stop and reflect to some degree when encountering these surfaces. So, not only does it encounter the inherent limitation to wireless communications, it isn't useful for someone who is outside on the go... because, well, "on the go" implies motion.
Let's take Verizon as an example of what Sprint should be. Both companies has extensively deployed a CDMA 3G network. However, Verizon must have read the specs from IEEE on the LTE standard and said to themselves, "Hmm, we can support voice calls and data calls, and can expect a high data rate even at speeds of 60mph. I think people will enjoy using this, maybe even pay more for it."
All I can say is, technology will kill you, Sprint. If you have any customers left when LTE goes mainstream (~2 years), you can kiss your WiMA$$ goodbye.