This is advanced thinking!!!!
PWAV + SAMSUNG = iPhone & Droid going head-to-head and the customer wins by finally getting to use the capability of the phone.

Ride the WAVE ~~~$$$~~~

Apple Should Turn To Sprint/Clearwire
By Anton Wahlman 11/04/09

Apple enjoys superior popularity with the iPhone today, but what will it need to do in order to lift the bar on keeping the iPhone "special?" Seeing as all the three main networks outside AT&T -- Sprint, VZW and T-Mobile -- offer service to the vast majority of U.S. households, the only remaining argument of greatest importance to Apple is technology.

What can Apple offer in terms of technology that would be truly special and differentiating? That's the question -- not how many legacy subscribers does a carrier have. People will follow Apple's lead; Apple doesn't need to follow the crowd, i.e., VZW's legacy customers.

Based on this premise of Apple's need to make technology its chief variable in selecting its next U.S. carrier partner, I believe the obvious answer is for Apple to make an iPhone for Sprint/Clearwire. Sprint owns approximately 50% of Clearwire, and the Sprint/Clearwire is a necessary combination because of backwards compatibility with EVDO.

Clearwire chose to build its nationwide 2.5-2.7 GHz network on the WiMax standard, which offers far greater speeds than any 3G technology such as EVDO. Clearwire's almost 200 MHz spectrum means that its capacity to support many users downloading/uploading data is vastly superior to all the other incumbent cellular providers.

What should be Apple's two most important goals with the iPhone working on a new network? capacity and latency:

Capacity: From downloading ever-richer applications to video/television/movies, Apple needs to demonstrate that its iPhone platform can deliver more bandwidth-intensive services than competitive devices.

Latency: This is critical for real-time communications such as voice and videoconferencing. VoIP services on smartphones are just starting now, but are suffering from generally poor quality as a result of unacceptable latency on today's HSPA and EVDO networks from AT&T, VZW and T-Mobile USA.

If these are the highest priorities for Apple, VZW doesn't give Apple what it needs until LTE makes its advent in handsets. Qualcomm(QCOM Quote) has stated that it expects to sample its "God-chip" -- the 8960 -- in mid-2010. This is the LTE chip with full backwards compatibility to all GSM and CDMA lineages such as HSPA and EVDO.

That in turn means that LTE handsets with backwards compatibility can be launched around the middle of 2011. Budget one year's worth of technology/standards slippage, and we can realistically expect backwards-compatible LTE handsets to become mainstream around the middle of 2012.