Sprint, Clearwire to build national WiMAX network
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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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(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel's ambitious Xohm WiMax vision will be based on a radical change in the way users pay for the service compared with cellular plans. Users will sign up for wireless broadband for a day, a month, or a year without a contract tied to a specific device. Payment could be made via a credit card wirelessly. The pricing approach, described in broad strokes by Sprint chief technology officer Barry West Wednesday at WiMax World in Chicago, will be designed on the principle of "affordable" broadband and "around the needs of the individual," he said in an interview. That approach breaks down the concept now seen with cellular plans, in which users typically buy a two-year contract in part to subsidize the cost of a single mobile device that a user is locked into using. A Sprint spokesman explained that the proposed pricing will rely on subscriptions, but not contracts in the sense associated with typical cellular contracts. And the longer the subscription a customer buys, the cheaper the service will be, he said. West said Sprint will announce pricing early next year, but also said it will probably be based on tiers of service. The cost of devices, such as laptop cards able to transmit mobile WiMax, will approximate the cost of a 3G broadband laptop card today, he said. In response to a question from an audience member, West also said that Xohm will not be backed by what the industry calls service-level agreements, a kind of guarantee that a minimum bandwidth will be provided or the customer receives a refund. "We will give you a good experience, but not SLAs," West said. Several Sprint executives have described Xohm WiMax speeds that are expected to be 2Mbps to 4Mbps, although the technology is capable of 10Mbps. At a demonstration onboard a moving tour boat on the Chicago River Tuesday night using Motorola gear, mobile WiMax shared across 12 laptops and cell phones was clocked at 2.5Mbps downward. West noted that the demonstration was across only one channel, and that Sprint will be able to offer many channels to handle users at a single antenna site, offering plenty of bandwidth for many users. West, who calls himself a technology "pragmatist," said he does not envision any hidden technology bugaboos in the nationwide rollout of Xohm planned for next year. In the next three years, he has predicted 50 million devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, will be WiMax-certified. Getting the certification process for interoperability in order will be difficult, but he said that even if there are 100,000 different devices, it is conceivable all of them could be served from only 10 different chip sets. "That's not unmanageable," he said. By contrast, West said Xohm's biggest challenge will be servicing the needs of 210 million Internet users in the United States alone, and meeting their demands for access, applications, and services. In his keynote, West said some critics have already begun to question whether West's predictions for Xohm's growth are too ambitious. He said commercial rollouts are still on schedule for the second quarter of 2008, and work has begun on 10,000 base stations nationally, with 20,000 WiMax antennas. The initial rollout in Chicago and Baltimore/Washington in December is "pretty much on target," he added. As for competition, West said he doesn't see Verizon Wireless or AT&T.
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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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SAN FRANCISCO - Intel Corp. will work with Clearwire Corp., a wireless Internet service provider founded by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, on future networks based on WiMax wireless broadband technology.
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More details of Sprint's WiMax initiative at CES, including pledges by several partners and Sprint that the effort is on track.
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Companies, including I.B.M. and Cisco Systems, announced plans for a vast network that will be the largest of a new breed of wireless networks being built across the country.
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Sprint Nextel Corp , which recently  said it would spend up to $5 billion on a mobile high-speed  wireless standard by 2010, said it had awarded the New York  WiMax market to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. .
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Clearwire has acquired spectrum from AT&T that is well-suited to help the company expand its WiMAX coverage.
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Broadband wireless carrier Clearwire and Intel Corp. said they will join forces to develop and deploy WiMAX wireless broadband networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Clearwire shares soared after the WiMax service provider's IPO on Thursday, though later in the day they settled around their initial price. The successful IPO, which raised about $600 million, may be a good sign for the emerging wireless broadband technology the company uses to provide Internet access to more than 200,000 U.S. customers. The company, backed by Intel and Motorola, serves 35 U.S. metropolitan markets. WiMax has a longer range than Wi-Fi and can deliver higher speeds depending on how bandwidth is allocated. Because it's based on standards, WiMax could become a widely deployed technology that's inexpensive to build into portable devices. Sprint Nextel plans to use the technology as a complement to its cellular network beginning later this year. Clearwire's underwriters sold 24 million shares at a price of $25 per share in the IPO. On Thursday, the stock opened at $27.25 per share, though later in the day it settled around the $25 level. The Kirkland, Washington, company was founded in 2003 by mobile pioneer Craig McCaw, who started McCaw Cellular in the 1990s and later sold it to AT&T Wireless. Clearwire filed for an IPO last year but withdrew the filing in July after receiving $600 million in funding from Intel Capital. Motorola participated in the same round of funding, which totaled $900 million, and in the process acquired NextNet Wireless, Clearwire's hardware subsidiary. Part of Clearwire's value comes from its spectrum licenses. Unlike Wi-Fi, WiMax is expected in many cases to be deployed over licensed frequencies. Sprint Nextel holds about 85 percent of the licenses across the country for spectrum in a valuable band around 2.5GHz that can be used for WiMax. The carrier, third-largest in the U.S., has said it expects to reach as many as 100 million people with WiMax by the end of next year.
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An emerging long-range,  high-speed wireless technology is expected to spread quickly  and be available globally within two years, a key backer of the  so-called WiMax technology said on Tuesday.
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Nokia said Wednesday it has been selected by Sprint to begin building out its fourth-generation wireless network based on WiMAX. Four Texas markets will be first to receive service in early 2008.
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As Wi-Fi solidifies its hold on the tech world, Sprint shores up its long-term plans for longer-range WiMax.
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Clearwire and Sprint Nextel have made  progress on reaching terms for a roaming deal for their  high-speed wireless networks based on WiMax technology,  Clearwire's Chief Executive said on Wednesday.
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Sprint is considering options such as spinning off its WiMAX business and taking on partners in an effort fimd its nationwide wireless broadband network.
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Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are back in talks about a possible WiMax joint venture after&#160;a previous attempt to work together fell apart last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.Sprint&#39;s continued downhill slide, spurred by defecting Nextel customers, means the deal would make even more sense now, Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst with ABI Research, told IDG News Service.&quot;They&#39;ve lost so much from iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) defections, they don&#39;t really have the money to invest in WiMax,&quot; she said. iDEN is the push-to-talk technology used in Nextel&#39;s network, which Sprint bought in 2005 and continues to struggle to digest.Clearwire and Sprint, which own the bulk of 2.5GHz spectrum in the country, said in July last year that&#160;they planned to jointly build a nationwide WiMax network. But in November the companies said they had failed to reach a final agreement, and terminated their letter of intent.Since then, Sprint hasn&#39;t managed to improve its fortunes. The third-largest operator in the U.S., Sprint&#39;s subscriber base declined by 337,000 in the quarter ending Sept. 30. &quot;Sprint is not doing so well now,&quot; Manjaro said.Rather than building a scaled-down network with the assets it has, Sprint would do better if it partnered with Clearwire and also opened up to outside investors, said Manjaro, who worked for Sprint until last April.From the beginning, she said, Sprint hoped to attract investors to help build the network. &quot;They realized it would take a lot of money,&quot; she said. Attracting other parties has now become more urgent. &quot;They didn&#39;t anticipate being in the financial position they are in now,&quot; she said.Ideally, Sprint and Clearwire would create a joint venture that would allow each company to retain a stake in the company but also attract other companies, possibly Intel or Google, to provide needed capital, she said. A combined company would be able to negotiate better deals from vendors, she said.Clearwire has already built wireless broadband networks in 16 U.S. states. Sprint has launched services in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., under the Xohm brand.Spokespeople from Clearwire and Sprint declined to comment on the possibility of any renewed talks.
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Sprint Nextel Corp &lt;S.N&gt;, which recently said it would spend up to $5 billion on a mobile high-speed wireless standard by 2010, said it had awarded the New York WiMax market to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. &lt;005930.KS&gt;.