A Massachusetts state court has stopped US-based wireless operator Sprint, a part of SoftBank, from shutting down broadband to 300,000 Americans.
The granting of preliminary injunction follows lawsuit by Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen, who rely on Sprint to serve their customers. The court orders Sprint to maintain the WiMax network in certain areas for 90 days to allow Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen time to migrate their users to Sprint’s LTE network.
Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen provide unlimited broadband service for $10 a month to 429 schools, 61 libraries and 1,820 nonprofit organizations across the country on Sprint’s WiMax network.
Sprint planned to shut down the WiMax network on Friday, November 6.
The issues happened after Sprint purchased Clearwire in 2013, but has failed to honor its contractual obligations under the various lease agreements, making it impossible for Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon to migrate their users over to Sprint’s LTE network prior to the November 6 deadline.
As per the earlier agreement, Mobile Citizen and Mobile Beacon leased a portion of their spectrum to Clearwire for 30 years in 2006 in exchange for unlimited, high-speed broadband service across the United States.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
