Speaking of choosing to fail

I won't claim to be CEO material, but I cannot get my head around Sprint's decision to split with Clearwire. I blame Sprint because I worked there long enough, it seems like just the kind of thing they'd do. Maybe Clearwire is at fault, but I cannot see how it's in Sprint's interest to let them go. At best, there's a new competitor. Who thinks Craig McCaw, et. al. will just call it quits after a bad day at the market. At the least, Sprint will muddle thru as they always do, and launch a substandard product, without any integration (technical, billing or marketing) with the rest of the company, just late enough to get stomped by a competitor. I would not be suprised to see them drop or massively delay the whole WiMax product. And this makes me sorta sad.

At Sprint, only 9 of 10 bad things are true

I've avoided saying much about my time at Sprint, even now that I've left; I still know people there, they are a client, etc. But, I am fine letting other people say it. Read Martin Geddes' list of 10 things Sprint did/does wrong. Okay, I'll comment a little. Number 5 is overstated. I've worked with some top-notch people at Sprint despite the locale. I'm surprised by the portability of today's workforce. And we built (or almost built) some great stuff. If anything, the issue is #6, preventing that workforce from doing the job they are paid to do. Despite my apparent pessimism, I have high hopes for things like WiMax. And, despite Sprint continuing to drop, I think the news of the Vonage settlement is nothing but good. Lawsuits are no way to run a company.