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Putting you in the driver's seat
US operator Sprint Nextel is capitalizing on its successful partnership with NASCAR to explore potential uses of the 2.5GHz spectrum.
July 19, 2006
The operator, created from the recent merger between Sprint and Nextel, now owns 2.5GHz coverage for 80 percent of the US, including most of the major markets. The Federal Communications Commission specified as a condition of the merger that Sprint Nextel offer broadband services using the 2.5GHz spectrum to 15 million people within four years of the merger's date and to an additional 15 million people within six years.
As a result, Sprint Nextel is now testing a number of possible applications for the 2.5GHz band. Among these is a service at NASCAR races called FanView. NASCAR motor racing is the third most popular sport in the US, and Nextel has been a primary sponsor for several years. The FanView device allows race fans to access up to seven in-car camera channels, race statistics, and direct audio feeds from the racing teams, all transmitted over the 2.5GHz spectrum. In an interview with Light Reading, Sprint's VP of innovative technologies, Ali Tabassi, described FanView as a possible precursor to what Sprint will someday offer on its mobile networks.
Big hit
FanView, introduced at the first race of the season at Daytona in February, proved a big hit. All 4000 of the devices available at the race were rented at a price of USD 50 for the day or USD 70 for the weekend. The device, manufactured by Kangaroo.TV, may be made available for purchase by NASCAR fans in the near future.
FanView expands on the extremely successful Fanscan service launched by Nextel in 2004. Fanscan allows fans at home to listen to and switch between driver/pit intercoms via a mobile call - just like having a radio scanner at the race. The service is available for USD 5 per event or a subscription fee of USD 10 per month. The service has been so popular that Nextel had to add capacity to its network to meet the demand.
Sprint Nextel has used its NASCAR sponsorship to drive traffic in a number of innovative ways. One is the annual NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge fan vote, in which racing fans can choose a driver for the All-Star race by voting using their mobiles. As of May, Sprint Nextel customers had cast more than 92,000 votes in this year's contest, a 511 percent increase over 2005. The company is also launching a special mobile channel featuring multimedia racing content to all customers who own Sprint Power Vision handsets.
The effort to reach racing fans has paid off for the company. Market research has revealed that NASCAR fans between the ages of 18 and 49 are five times as likely as non-fans to have signed up or switched to Sprint Nextel over the past year.
