httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRfCM1BbmBM Sprint customers in the Big Apple with the HTC EVO, Samsung Epic or an Overdrive card got a much welcomed surprise today. 4G service came online today. Get ready to blow through batteries like never before! Hartford, New Haven, New Brunswick, Trenton and Tampa also got added to the ever expanding coverage list for Sprint's next generation service. Customers can currently get 4G service in 61 cities, including Chicago, Baltimore and Houston, and by the end of this year Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Denver and Washington DC. Sprint has some great videos up on the challenges of managing and expanding a network in an area like New York City. The first one is posted above, the other two are after the break.

Read the rest of this post »

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, speaking to FierceWireless, explained that Sprint will eventually shut down the iDEN network that they inherited in the 2004 acquisition of Nextel. But don't expect your push to talk to quit working tomorrow. Hesse gave no firm date on its demise.

"Over time, we'll have fewer and fewer customers on the iDEN network," he said. "That allows us to use some of that capacity on the network that is freed up and use it for CDMA. It's a gradual process. There will be an end date for all 2G, just like there was an end date for 1G."

He also touched on their plans to implement 4G through LTE on their network, just as the other major carriers have committed to doing, but did not announce what network vendor they would partner with. As it is now, Sprint has their 4G network through Clearwire's WiMax technology, which some have questioned its ability to hold up to LTE, once it becomes the standard protocol in the United States.