Sprint CEO Claims Pole Position in Race to 4G - Page 2

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"One of the challenges that the next administration and the FCC face is to try to figure out how ... we incentivize these new wireless technologies to be built in rural America. And there will have to be some form of subsidy mechanism to make it happen," Hesse said. "There has to be some kind of public-private partnership."

And the wrong way to do it? Regulation.

"I think the telecom industry as a whole, probably the thing that scares the industry the most about a Democratic administration is regulating ... what's working really, really well, and that's the Internet," he said. "It's called Net neutrality, and that's regulating the Internet."

The term "Net neutrality," Hesse said, is straight out of "1984," George Orwell's dystopian novel where words mean the opposite of what they sound like. As carriers, the need to stifle one heavy user who's "gumming up the network" is essential to providing an overall level of service, just as an apartment building portions out the water supply to all of its tenets. Stripping carriers' ability to mange the allocation a limited commodity would have "horrendous implications."

Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has pledged his support for Net neutrality; John McCain opposes it.

A customer-friendly network and a Sprint Android phone?

Faster networks give rise to ever-more sophisticated devices, which Hesse said can be a double-edged sword.

Last holiday season, the gifts that people returned most often were smartphones and PDAs, Hesse told the audience.

"The number one reason given was it was just too complicated to set up," he said. Customers crave a "worry-free experience," which means easy-to-use, intuitive devices backed by great customer support.

Sprint has received some poor marks for its customer service, but Hesse has made it a top priority to shed that stigma in his 10 months in the company's top spot.

Under his stewardship, the company's customer-support operation has become "focused maniacally on what we call first-call resolution," Hesse said. Swifter resolution of customer issues, coupled with network improvements that cut down on the number of complaints about dropped calls, has enabled Sprint to close six call centers this year.

To a similar end, the company has launched initiatives such as "Ready Now," where salespeople in Sprint's stores configure customers' phones to their specifications, and rolled out several new one-touch models and the Instinct, Sprint's iPhone rival. Even the name is intuitive, Hesse pointed out.

He had high marks for Apple's device, and the aggressive price point that it has been made available to consumers thanks to a hefty subsidy from AT&T.

As to the latest challenger to the iPhone's mantle as the coolest phone on the planet -- T-Mobile's G1 -- Hesse was lukewarm. The G1 runs the Android operating system, an open source project spearheaded by Google but developed under the auspices of the Open Handset Alliance, of which Sprint is a member.

"We're very interested also in developing an Android-capable phone," he said. "We don't think it's ready yet to be good enough to put the Sprint brand on. But you can expect an Android device from Sprint sometime in the future."