DG: Is that any consumer or just the business customers?

JH: Any customer, consumer or business that deploys what we call a wireless Web modem, either onto a laptop platform or into the cradle of a handheld computing device. You can take that device now and instead of operating it at 14.4K speed, you actually get, through compression, a user experience that's more in line with 56K.

As you probably know, we've publicly announced our deployment strategy for 3G and CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association) this last spring. That deployment is significant in the marketplace because we'll be the first player that will be able to deliver a nationwide, seamless, high-speed experience for enterprise customers. That's really critical because, I don't know about you, but the enterprise customers I know don't want to deploy patchwork applications.

They want to deploy it one way, nationwide, because they've got to be able to support it, and they're committed to a consistent, seamless experience for their users. The R3G platform will let them do that. That platform, in its initial rollout starting this fall and continuing nationwide by the middle of next year, will take our speed up to peak performance, at 144K. And then, by the end of next year, as we launch phase two of 3G, we'll actually go up into the 300K range.

DG: When you get up to speeds like that, you're competing against hardware DSL capabilities.

JH: Absolutely. We're going to start bypassing the phone jacks altogether. Now, think about the power of that mobility as you take that mobile bandwidth with you wherever you go. Really powerful.

The beauty of the 3G migration for us is not only does it increase speeds for our customers, it actually doubles our capacity on our voice network. So, even on our existing network, when we deploy out to 3G, it'll be just like automatically doubling the capacity. And that just means more availability for our users. Fewer dropped calls, fewer blocked calls for our users.

A side effect of this is that we improve the battery life because we get better power management. What that means for our Palm OS device users is because the 3G technology is more efficient at power management, you'll start to see battery life in many cases actually double, once deployed on the 3G network.

DG: Take out your crystal ball for a minute. What do you see as Sprint PCS's vision of wireless Palm computing for the enterprise in, say, five years and ten years out?

JH: To get exciting, I don't think you have to go five; I think you can start to go three. Again, in a three-year period, we'll go into the next phases of 3G, which will take us up to 2.4MB per second types of speeds. And when you can get 2MB down to a portable device, you're talking full-motion video, just a multitude of applications.

For the enterprise, you could do voice conferencing. You can do training applications, training the whole sales force. All they'd have to do is pull out their Palm OS device and literally listen to a nationwide address from the CEO of the company about their earnings performance.