Speaking during a roundtable at Mobile World Congress, Sprint executives have confirmed a few key moves for the carrier in the coming months.
First, it has decided to wait 4-6 months to make a final decision on its 4G strategy, which will be dependent on the rate of customers moving from EVDO to WiMax before deciding to stay with WiMax or deciding to roll out LTE. Related to the Network Vision initiative, the carrier has also confirmed the roll out of the CDMA 1xAdvanced as well as the replacement of its current T1-based backhaul solution for cellsites with a combination of microwave and fiber backhaul for greater capacity.
Finally, the confirmation of a new CDMA push to talk solution was elaborated on, with Bob Azzi stating that the new solution is an upgrade from the previous QChat solution and admitting that adoption of QChat was less than hoped for, with one of the main problems being in coverage differences. Sprint executives expect that the new solution will be an improvement over QChat with new features that they hope to draw customers, but did not specify which features would be included.
