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From the New York Times: Spring announced another quarterly loss today of 18 cents a share or US$505 million. The news is bad, as it looks like the mobile telecom is losing some of its biggest customers:

In the first quarter, the company lost 1.1 million subscribers; the total number dropped to 52.8 million.

Analysts do not seem spooked, although Sprint’s CEO is considering a sale of Nextel. The recently announced Clearwire joint venture may help prospects in the near-term, but not right now.

Related posts on billso.com

• 8 May 2008: Google bets big on Sprint and Clearwire’s WiMAX venture
• 6 May 2008: T-Mobile’s parent may buy Sprint
• 22 February 2008: Customer lock-in
• 20 January 2008: Nokia, Sprint announce layoffs
• 27 August 2007: Wireless providers gird themselves for battle
• 14 June 2007: Clearwire signs WiMax deal with DirecTV, EchoStar
• 5 February 2007: Wireless from the inside out

Google is teaming up with Clearwire, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Intel to build a national WiMAX network. See the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Branding Post for more details.

The new joint venture will retain the Clearwire brand name and Clearwire’s existing consumer WiMAX business. Sprint contributes its network infrastructure and 2.5 gHz frequency allocation. It’s possible this deal will clear the FCC and antitrust regulators, because Google isn’t a major owner in the JV.

Yesterday, a Wall Street journal blog referenced my billso.com article of 18 April 2008 in a discussion about Yahoo and Google’s possible cross-licensing deal. The Clearwire deal is a more direct combination that may help the JV partners lock in consumers, businesses and advertisers.

Too many partners?

I’m reluctant to believe if this large joint venture can actually work. Sprint is the lead partner with a 51 percent stake, and this seems like a desperation move to being acquired outright by Deutsche Telekom or another company.

Pricing and marketing may determine if consumers will pay any attention to this JV. Can Clearwire and Sprint can offer their existing customers some compelling reasons to get some new hardware and try WiMAX? Verizon earns 23 percent of its wireless revenue from data calls on that company’s EVDO and other networks.

Google does need a vast network in the US to support its Android smartphone platform, and the company can’t wait or afford to build it from scratch.

WiMAX would give Google an alternate medium for data service, instead of relying on one telecom carrier as Apple has done with AT&T. Even with 3G service, the iPhone’s data transfer rates will seem slow when the user can’t get WiFi access.

Yes, the iPhone does support WiFi. But I’m sure Clearwire and its partners will market Android phones that support WiFi as well as WiMAX and the sponsoring carrier’s cell phone service, but the battery drain for a typical mobile device user may be a serious problem.

Related posts on billso.com

• 6 May 2008: T-Mobile’s parent may buy Sprint
• 29 April 2008: New iPhone will be subsidized, faster and thinner
• 22 April 2008: Android vs iPhone
• 18 April 2008: Antitrust regulators would fight a Yahoo-Google combination
• 18 March 2008: The 700 mHz auction is over
• 28 February 2008: The Google cable
• 22 February 2008: Customer lock-in
• 20 January 2008: Nokia, Sprint announce layoffs
• 9 December 2007: The mobile office in Honolulu
• 12 September 2007: The Google Phone and the iPhone – both looking for software and spectrum
• 27 August 2007: Wireless providers gird themselves for battle
• 14 June 2007: Clearwire signs WiMax deal with DirecTV, EchoStar
• 5 February 2007: Wireless from the inside out

Here’s a bit of chill in the broadband economy.

Monday, rumors swirled that Sprint would lay off several thousand workers this year, after laying off 5000 employees last year. The Nextel network integration has taken more time and money than anticipated, while the company’s WiMax venture stagnates.

Mobile telcos live and die on corporate sales. Nextel customers have been loyal to a fault, but that annoying push-to-talk feature is old news. Companies want lower prices, more features, and superior coverage.

Tuesday, Nokia announced it will layoff 2300 workers at a German manufacturing plant. Production will be moved to lower-cost countries like Romania. Nokia has laid off 9000 more workers in its joint venture with Siemens.

InformationWeek mentions both companies in this article.

In this Reuters article that appeared on Friday, German politicians have vowed to punish Nokia for the plant closure.

Another Reuters article on Friday confirmed that Sprint is laying off 4,000 workers. The company has also confirmed that over 900,000 subscribers have left Sprint in the last year. Sprint stock took a 25 percent dive on the news.

There’s two articles in today’s Honolulu newspapers about local Internet usage.

An article in the Honolulu Advertiser’s business section reports that Honolulu residents tend to spend more time on the Internet than the average US Internet user.

Oceanic Time Warner’s Road Runner cable modem service recently celebrated its 10th anniversary in Honolulu. The company reports that Honolulu is one of its most mature markets, with 220,000 customers. Many customers use residential broadband service to work from home.

Meanwhile, the lead story in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s business section examined the coffee shop office. At the bottom of the article, there’s a nice set of netiquette tips for public WiFi users. One major item in this list – people who buy little or nothing from a coffee shop while they use the free WiFi. Squatters beware!

Sadly, there wasn’t a single meaningful mention of security and privacy issues in either article. I recommend that anyone who uses their computer in a public place buy and use a privacy filter. This is a thin piece of polarized plastic that completely covers the screen. The filter restricts the viewing angle, making it difficult for anyone but the user to read the screen. 3M has a nice selection of filters that will fit most laptops. The Gadgeteer has a good review here.

The next two pictures demonstrate how a privacy filter works, by comparing a bare screen  on the left with the filtered screen on the right.

More public WiFi services are offering encrypted sessions, but it’s a good idea to use a VPN (virtual private network) to encrypt traffic. For companies whose employees tend to use public WiFi, a VPN is an easy expense to justify. Residential users can also set up their own VPN with a router, open source software or web-based services like GoToMyPC.

This article mentioned Kokua Wireless, a free municipal WiFi service that covers my office building in downtown Honolulu. Kokua’s coverage of downtown Honolulu is quite good, as shown in this screen shot from their mapping application.

Residential broadband providers have joined the battle for customer loyalty. Road Runner has Speed Zone, its own public WiFi network for its residential and business customers. Hawaiian Telcom partnered with Skywave to offer HT Spots, its own attempt at satisfying this key success factor. Users must have be a broadband subscriber to use these either of these services.

In the last few months, I’ve noticed more people around town using mobile data cards from Sprint, AT&T and Clearwire. These devices are more expensive and more secure than some public WiFi connections. Both HawTel and Oceanic offer encrypted public WiFi connections, of course.

According to a report in tomorrow’s Business Week, developers are building applications for the Google Phone. I mentioned the gPhone on 27 August. This 6 September article has additional details.

Of course, everyone has signed non-disclosure agreements (NDA) and Google management is doing its best to dispel these persistent rumors of a web-centric Linux-powered mobile phone.

Google and Apple have a fruitful partnership, as I mentioned on 21 June. But the mobile communications industry keeps growing, and Google needs new ways to increase its advertising revenue. The gPhone would provide a great opportunity to create a mobile advertising industry.

Google seems to building a platform that programmers can use to easily build mobile applications, with plenty of hooks into Google services like Gmail, Google Maps, and the Google Search engine.

If Google does open up this application programming interface (API) so that programmers can build true mobile applications that run on the gPhone and tap the Internet, it will be much easier for developers to distribute their gPhone software on the mobile Internet.

Compare this scenario with the Apple iPhone, which restricts developers to web-based mobile applications. Apple likes to lock down their hardware to keep it stable and secure. AT&T, like any sensible mobile carrier, wants to keep its network secure and free from rogue applications. It’s a classic walled garden.

The closed software model works for the iPod, but it remains to be seen if customers will tolerate a closed iPhone. Corporate customers want to add their own software to the iPhone, of course, but it’s so much easier when the API is open and available.

Google and Apple are each looking at the upcoming FCC auction for the analog television spectrum. Business Week speculated on their plans in this 10 September article. The winners of this auction would control a nice range of convenient, unused bandwidth in North America after television stations switch to HDTV transmission in early 2009. That spectrum is a great place to build a national mobile telecommunciations network that’s independent of the mobile phone carriers.

Given Apple’s closed model, it’s easy to guess that an Apple mobile network would feature Apple hardware, software and services, with Apple calling the shots on pricing.

Google, on the other hand, looks more likely to let multiple hardware vendors build compatible devices for the gPhone, and let software developers write the applications, as long as Google services are easy to bundle and use.

Building a new national mobile network would be an expensive proposition, especially as Sprint continues to plan its WiMax strategy. See this 28 August article and this 7 September article, both on Engadget, for more details. Clearwire, the current leader in WiMax deployment, continues with its national plans, as I described on 14 June. However, Clearwire stock took a beating Monday, as its joint work with Sprint hasn’t impressed investors yet, according to a 10 September report in Forbes. This 19 July Forbes article has some additional background on the Sprint-Clearwire national WiMax network.

WiMax makes sense for laptop users, because a laptop battery can deal with the radio modem’s power requirements.

Mobile phones need small batteries, however, and the analog television spectrum is an ideal place for residential wireless connectivity. If I were running a landline telephone company, I’d be worried.