Sprint management shakeup looks to impact network leadership
Story updated to clarify John Saw’s previous position
Sprint’s management changes continued today as the mobile operator announced current Softbank EVP and CTO Junichi Miyakawa would take on the newly created role of technical COO.
Sprint explained that in the new position, Miyakawa will oversee the company’s network and technology organization, including related strategy, network operations and performance, and will lead Sprint’s relationships with “key network equipment vendors.” Miyakawa will also report directly to Sprint’s recently installed CEO Marcelo Claure.
Sprint pointed to Miyakawa’s work on rolling out Softbank’s 2.5 GHz-based mobile services, a spectrum band that is the base for Sprint’s nascent Spark offering.
“Miyakawa-san transformed the SoftBank network in Japan and I’m confident that his expertise and leadership will help us do the same thing for Sprint customers,” said Claure in a statement. “We already have made substantial progress on the Sprint network and it is performing better every day. He will work directly with our network team as we continue to build out our network to take advantage of our strong and unique spectrum position.”
The move also places new leadership on the organizational chart on top of Sprint’s current CTO Stephen Bye and CNO John Saw, who will continue to lead their respective organizations, but now report directly to Miyakawa.
Sprint has seen a number of management changes since being acquired by Softbank last year. Earlier this year, Bob Azzi, SVP of networks at Sprint, and Steve Elfman, president of network operations both left the carrier. Those moves propelled Saw from his previous role as SVP of technical architecture into his current role.
Those moves followed ongoing struggles at Sprint to overcome network issues connected to its Network Vision program that has seen the carrier basically replace all of its network hardware and resulted in network interruptions impacting operational results.
More recently, Sprint announced its Spark program that will see the carrier tie together its extensive spectrum holdings across the 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands to support higher-speed data services. The carrier has boasted a lot about the competitive advantage its deep 2.5 GHz spectrum band will provide, though current deployment plans have Sprint only covering 100 million potential customers with the service by the end of this year. Claure recently told an investor conference that the operator would be “very strategic” in its 2.5 GHz plans, and was also looking to scale back original plans that called for 2.5 GHz equipment to be installed at all of its cell sites and would instead focus on more densely populated areas.
Sprint’s current LTE deployment is based on 10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band, with Sprint recently claiming to have surpassed 250 million potential customers covered with its LTE service. Independent speed tests have shown that Sprint’s LTE network is not nearly as extensive as those of its rivals, and where customers do have access to the LTE network, throughput speeds also fall short of those posted by competing LTE networks.
Sprint is in the process of bolstering its LTE network with 800 MHz spectrum freed up from the decommissioning of its iDEN network, however, some of that spectrum is also being used to support CDMA voice services, leaving only a few megahertz for LTE.
That’s where the 2.5 GHz spectrum comes in. Sprint is sitting on an average of more than 150 megahertz of spectrum in that band across the country, with plans to tap those assets to fulfill the promise of its Spark network initiative. That program has touted network speeds in excess of 50 megabits per second thanks to the boost being offered by throwing multiple and wide 2.5 GHz channels at customers. But, with the 2.5 GHz support now being seemingly trimmed to only larger markets, only some of Sprint’s customers will be able to reap the speed benefits.
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