Sprint Unveils Home Cells to Boost Signal
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Underdog mobile operator Sprint Nextel Corp. quietly rolled out an emerging technology on Monday to give customers a strong cellular signal and flat-rate calling at home.
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3G femtocells, which promise to deliver indoor coverage and cheap service for 3G networks, are a step closer, thanks to a base station built using chips designed for mass-market handsets.
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Sprint has deployed EV-DO Rev A upgrades in 10 more markets, bringing the number of cities equipped with the next-generation high-speed wireless technology to 20.
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Sprint Corp. (FON.N) said on  Friday it made a deal that will let it nearly double the number of places it offers short-range wireless Internet connections.
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Sprint Nextel yesterday announced a series of partnerships aimed at deploying a high-speed wireless network called WiMax, as it offered glimpses of the new technology at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
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Sprint Nextel Corp.  and  Clearwire Corp.  plan to build a U.S. nationwide mobile  broadband network using WiMAX technology that will be five  times faster than current wireless networks and cost less.
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Sprint said today that it may begin to unlock its cell phones for use on other carrier networks.
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(InfoWorld) - The groundwork is being laid for a risky experiment in consumer electronics as manufacturers prepare for Sprint Nextel and Clearwire's Xohm WiMax service. Motorola unveiled a WiMax client chipset on Tuesday and praised Sprint's strategy of leaving WiMax clients to device makers and retailers. But that plan, a change of pace from U.S. carriers' usual practice of selling and subsidizing phones themselves, could take years to pay off in the mass market. The chipset, introduced at WiMax World USA in Chicago, is small, economical, and more power-efficient than 3G platforms, according to Gary Koerper, Motorola's vice president of platform planning and architecture. It will hit the market in client devices in the second half of 2008, with the company initially focusing on building WiMax phones that carry its own brand, he said. The devices will be offered for various WiMax services around the world, including Xohm. With Xohm, Motorola will have free rein to make whatever kind of device it wants as long as it's certified to work on the carrier's network, Koerper said. Motorola calls that great news, but some observers see a hard road ahead with device makers or carriers pushing an alternative to carrier-subsidized phones. "The model Sprint is pursuing is really taking the shackles off Motorola innovation and Motorola's brand," Koerper said. Typically, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker has to develop a new product and then get a carrier to buy in on it. With WiMax devices designed to work with Xohm, Motorola can look straight to the consumer and build what they want. This could make it easier for Motorola to compete with Apple's hot iPhone, he said. Apple's product has stolen the thunder from Motorola's popular Razr line even though it commands a full, unsubsidized price. Sprint's whole WiMax initiative is a risky bid to gain an edge in the U.S. mobile market, where Sprint is in third place by subscribers. The technology promises a fat pipe to the Internet that subscribers can take with them all over a metropolitan area. Motorola said its chipset offers 10Mbps downstream and 3 to 4Mbps upstream, far faster than current 3G and comparable to a cable modem. But it will take more than fast Internet access to attract and keep paying customers, said Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research. There are other ways to get fast data service, and there will be more in the future, so Sprint needs to create attractive services such as a VoIP application, high-quality video content, and easy tools for professionals to access corporate networks over VPNs, Lin said. Ease of use, support, and coverage will also be key because cellular services already have those established, he added. "You don't automatically get hundreds of thousands of early adopters," Lin said. The lack of a subsidy isn't even the biggest concern for vendors trying to sell devices for such a service, but it is a long-term problem, he said. Although down from about 95 percent a few years ago, the percentage of phones sold with subsidies in the U.S. is still 85 percent or more, according to Lin. Worldwide, about half of all cell phones are sold with subsidies, he said. As people look for more special features on their phones, they are looking outside of carriers' offerings more often, but it will be three years before the average U.S. consumer will want an unsubsidized phone, Lin predicted. Len Lauer, an executive vice president at mobile technology giant Qualcomm, was also pessimistic in an interview earlier this year. He doesn't think the mobile industry can be transformed by new strategies like Sprint's nor by the any-device, any-service band planned for the 700MHz wireless spectrum to be auctioned next year. U.S. consumers are too addicted to subsidies to buy many devices sold outside the carrier channel, said Lauer, a former Sprint executive. Motorola is pitching its chipset as competitive with 3G instead of an expensive, futuristic new technology. The cost of the chipset is already low and will keep falling to the point that Motorola could soon bring the chipset to inexpensive phones to be used primarily for voice in developing markets, Koerper said. The chipset, consisting of a baseband modem and a radio reference design, has been tested and verified with WiMax network infrastructure from Motorola and other leading vendors, the company said.
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Cingular Wireless, the largest US cellphone service provider, has announced plans to upgrade its high-speed data network, allowing faster downloads than are now available on many home broadband connections.
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The service lets users make calls over Wi-Fi from their homes as well as T-Mobile hot spots.
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(InfoWorld) - Underdog mobile operator Sprint Nextel quietly rolled out an emerging technology on Monday to give customers a strong cellular signal and flat-rate calling at home. In parts of Denver and Indianapolis, Sprint started selling aÂ femtocell, a small cellular base station that provides service specifically to a customer's home. The Sprint Airave, made by Samsung Electronics, costs $49.99 and is designed for people to install in their own homes by plugging it into a broadband Internet connection. Then they can pay a flat monthly rate -- $15 for an individual and $30 for a family -- for unlimited local and nationwide long-distance calls while at home. The Airave works with any Sprint handset, and when the subscriber leaves home, a call will automatically shift over to the outside cellular network. Femtocells are designed to solve the problem of weak cellular signals in homes, which is common in the U.S. They are an alternative to Wi-Fi phones, which are available only in a limited selection, though they work with wireless LAN gear that's already widely used in homes. Sprint is at least the first major U.S. carrier to offer femtocells, which are expected to enter the market in high volume in 2009. The carrier plans to start selling the Airave all across Denver and Indianapolis, as well as in Nashville, Tennessee, by year's end. It will be offered nationwide in 2008, Sprint said in a press release. The move is the latest use of new technology by Sprint, a smaller rival to Verizon Wireless and AT&T's wireless division, in a bid to compete. The Overland Park, Kansas, carrier is also set toÂ roll out WiMax wireless broadbandÂ on a limited basis later this year and to cities across the country next year. Femtocells take their name from "femto," which denotes a small order of size in physics. The idea has been around a long time but until recently was held up by size and cost concerns. Now several carriers in various countries are considering deploying them, according to vendors and analysts. While helping subscribers get good service, the devices save carriers from deploying more expensive base stations on towers just to keep up with the growing number of people trying to use 3G (third-generation) mobile data services. One question yet to be answered about femtocells is whether they will interfere with the existing outdoor cellular network. That can only be answered through real-world deployments, analysts say. Sprint's offer comes sooner and at a lower price than many observers expected. The price is especially notable because Sprint isn't forcing buyers into long-term contracts. Sprint must be subsidizing the cost, said In-Stat analyst Allen Nogee. "I guarantee it costs more than $50," Nogee said. However, the carrier will make back some of its cost through the special flat service charge, he said, because it wouldn't be making any money off the calls anyway -- many calls at home are made during nights and weekends when they are free, he added. Maybe most importantly, the Airave could help Sprint cultivate loyal customers and get consumers to give up their landlines -- along with their relationships with Verizon and AT&T, he said. Â
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Sprint Nextel Corp.  and Clearwire Corp.  plan to build a U.S. nationwide mobile broadband network using WiMAX technology that will be five times faster than current wireless networks and cost less.
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Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless are upgrading their 3G wireless networks with new technology that will increase speeds.
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InfoWorld - Sprint Nextel plans to cooperate with enterprises on the rollout of its WiMax mobile broadband network, letting the customers install and own short-range base stations in their buildings with automatic roaming onto the carrier&#39;s WiMax network outside.
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The race for higher-speed wireless devices got another contestant Monday, when Sprint announced the availability of the Mogul smartphone from HTC. It is the first Sprint handset to support the higher transmission speeds of EVDO, as well as the first CDMA device in the U.S. to sport Windows Mobile 6 Professional.
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Sprint Nextel and its hardware partners sought to convince a small audience at the Consumer Electronics Show that their WiMax plans are on track, despite the recent departure of Sprint&#39;s CEO and the dissolution of its partnership with Clearwire.&quot;We are exactly where we said we&#39;d be,&quot; said Barry West, Sprint Nextel&#39;s CTO and president of the company&#39;s Xohm WiMax business unit. Sprint is in the process of soft-launching in Chicago and Baltimore, he said.Executives from Nokia and Samsung said they both expect to have user devices ready for the second-quarter launch. In addition, Motorola said it is working on a device that will operate over Sprint&#39;s EvDO (evolution, data optimized) cellular network, Wi-Fi, and WiMax.Since the&#160;ouster of Gary Forsee, the former CEO and chairman of Sprint Nextel, who was thought to be a champion of the company&#39;s WiMax plans, onlookers have speculated that the network might not roll out as planned. In addition,&#160;Sprint Nextel ended a partnership with Clearwire&#160;to jointly deploy WiMax, a further cause for uncertainty. Sprint has been hemorrhaging mobile subscribers and recording declining revenues since its purchase of Nextel.Beyond the unrest internally at Sprint, the company faces critics of WiMax who say that the technology won&#39;t work as well as cellular technologies in a mobile environment and that it won&#39;t support international roaming as easily as the cellular standards.But in describing the reasons why Sprint chose WiMax and why it intends to aggressively pursue the network, West further sought to soothe market qualms about the future.&quot;Being first to market is a huge advantage,&quot; he said. &quot;And WiMax technology is here, now, and mature.&quot;While an investment in a totally new technology requires a strong reason for change, this won&#39;t be the first time Sprint&#39;s doing it, he noted. WiMax doesn&#39;t follow on the upgrade path for CDMA, the basis for Sprint&#39;s cellular network, so it requires a totally new network.Sprint did that first when it moved from an analog cellular network to digital, West said. The same went for the move to third-generation technology, although in that case Sprint stuck with the CDMA path.Sprint also considered LTE (Long Term Evolution), a fourth-generation mobile technology, but one big disadvantage is that it&#39;s not yet available, he said.Moving to WiMax represents a shift to a new air interface technology: OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) instead of CDMA, which is the basis of the current 3G technologies. According to West, when CDMA is deployed in a wider section of spectrum, which helps boost throughput, the computational complexity required goes up exponentially. That requires higher-performance chips, which come with a steep price tag, he said.With WiMax, Sprint plans to use a wide section of spectrum that can dynamically switch from carrying data up or down, depending on user requirements, he said.Beyond the radically different network technology, Sprint envisions a very different business model than cellular, one that will support any kind of standard device.&quot;Look at the cellular model. It was very successful but also very frustrating,&quot; West said. He was referring to the business model in the United States where operators subsidize phones and then require long-term subscriptions from users.With Xohm, Sprint will allow any WiMax-compliant device to run on the network, he said. End-users will buy the devices themselves, probably at a variety of retail stores and hopefully for a low price because vendors expect the cost of WiMax chips to drop dramatically, like Wi-Fi. &quot;Since I&#39;ve got no money in you, I don&#39;t need a contract,&quot; West said. That opens the door to a wide array of new pricing scenarios. End-users could pay for the day, week, month, or on a regular subscription, he said.While West declined to cite specific prices, he said a monthly subscription to Xohm will be comparable to existing DSL rates.Initially, Sprint will sell PC cards and modems, but by the end of this year as many as&#160;10 different kinds of devices could be available, he said. Navigation and gaming devices are possibilities, he said.If the market has any doubts about Sprint&#39;s plans for the network, it should rest assured that, regardless, the future of WiMax is more certain, panelists said. &quot;WiMax is bigger than Sprint,&quot; said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president and general manager for Intel Capital and for Intel&#39;s WiMax business.Motorola alone has 17 contracts for networks and is involved in 60 trials, said Fred Wright, senior vice president and general manager at Motorola. &quot;This technology is real, it&#39;s not a fairy tale,&quot; he said.
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Sprint Nextel Corp  customers can  now use mobile phones to shop for everything from shoes to  televisions in a new service the No. 3 U.S. wireless company  has launched to boost revenue.