Sprint Nextel sticks with wireless hot spot plan

— -- Sprint Nextel plans to stay the course on WiMax, a developing wireless technology that offers the prospect of unfettered national roaming for wireless broadband users, the acting CEO says.

WiMax "as a strategy is the future of the business," Paul Saleh, recently installed as acting CEO, said in an interview.

Formerly the chief financial officer, Saleh was named acting CEO after the board forced out CEO Gary Forsee earlier this month. The board says it is focusing on outside candidates to fill the job.

"This is where the market is going," Saleh says flatly.

Less clear is where Sprint is going. Forsee stepped down amid growing dissatisfaction over Sprint's performance since it merged with Nextel, which has a network based on a different technology. The combined company has 54 million customers but is still struggling with a thicket of merger-related problems.

Unhappy investors have pounded Sprint's stock price. Since the merger closed in 2005, shares have lost more than 25% of their value.

To help stem the exodus of customers, Saleh says he intends to eliminate anything that "interferes" with customer growth.

One example? "By not introducing any product that takes too long to activate for customers," he says. "In the past, some Sprint products, because of their sophistication and complexity, took too much time to activate," leading to frustration for customers.

Other nuggets from Saleh about Sprint's future: