Sprint's limited WiMax launch near; wide rollout in limbo
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WiMax products abounded at a large trade show this week, but Sprint's long-term WiMax plans remain hazy as the troubled carrier sorts out its priorities.
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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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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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Sprint-Clearwire detente? There could be changes afoot in the world of WiMAX. One rumor-happy research firm is claiming that US WiMAX pioneer Clearwire may soon be purchased by Intel, while another is speculating that the company will soon resume its defunct WiMAX relationship with Sprint Nextel.â¦
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The trademark "SprintSpeed" could take on a whole new meaning in 2008, as the telecommunications firm moves ahead with plans to deploy its long-awaited WiMAX service, known commercially as Xohm. Yesterday, the company announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that a soft launch of the service to Xohm employees in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. is now under way.
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A boat trip on the Chicago River helped show WiMax as a fast mobile wireless network technology, but less clear are when mobile workers and consumers can get the products, at what price and how WiMax world will interact with Wi-Fi or other networks.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Sprint Nextel and Clearwire have entered an agreement to jointly build the first nationwide WiMax network in the U.S., the two companies announced Thursday. The vendors will work together on the WiMax network and expect to offer service to a broad range of users, including the U.S. government, public safety agencies, businesses, and consumers, they said. The two companies plan to reach 100 million U.S customers by the end of 2008, said Gary Forsee, Sprint Nextel chairman and CEO, during a press conference. The WiMax network, which will be marketed under a common brand, will compete with and compliment existing broadband services, he said. The deal "will fundamentally change the communications landscape in this country," added Ben Wolff, Clearwire CEO. "By working together, a nationwide network becomes possible." Sprint Nextel will build out about 65 percent of the network, and Clearwire will build out the remaining 35 percent, the companies said. The agreement still needs to be finalized, and it will be subject to regulatory approval by the U.S. Department of Justice and spectrum transfers from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Sprint Nextel will focus on geographic areas covering approximately 185 million people, including 75 percent of the people located in the 50 largest U.S. markets, while Clearwire will concentrate on areas covering approximately 115 million people. A year ago, Sprint Nextel announced its plans for a nationwide WiMax network. The partnership with Clearwire allows Sprint Nextel to invest less money to create a nationwide network, Forsee said. The agreement will also allow the two companies to provide customers with "more breadth and depth of support," he added. The partners said the wireless network will provide broadband-speed Internet access to customers. The agreement will enable "seamless" roaming across the network, Forsee said. WiMax is designed to operate more than five times faster than current third-generation wireless networks. The arrangement will allow the exchange of spectrum between Sprint Nextel and Clearwire to enable each company to build out its portion of the network and to enhance service in its buildout territory, the companies said. Clearwire will be able to use some of Sprint Nextel's wireless infrastructure. The initial term of the arrangement is 20 years, with three 10-year renewal periods.
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The proposed merger of Sprint and Nextel Communications could face a rocky start as the companies work to run and eventually merge two wireless technologies without breaking the bank or losing customers.
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Sprint Nextel and Clearwire announced a plan to build a nationwide WiMax network in the U.S.
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Sprint Nextel Corp., the nation's third-largest cellular provider, said Tuesday it will use an emerging technology called WiMax to build a new high-speed wireless network.
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Cisco Systems sees a big market for WiMax, but not primarily in high-profile deployments in the developed world such as&#160;Sprint Nextel&#39;s nationwide network, planned for commercial launch in the U.S. next year.Cisco&#39;s acquisition of Navini Networks, expected to close in January, will make it a vendor of wireless radios to carriers for the first time, even though it has been selling the infrastructure behind all kinds of radios for several years. The prospect of getting in early on a market transition was one thing that made WiMax attractive, according to Brett Galloway, vice president and general manager of Cisco&#39;s wireless networking business unit.But the main opportunity Cisco sees is in building networks in developing countries, initially to bring broadband to stationary users, company executives said Wednesday at the annual C-Scape analyst conference in San Jose, California. That&#39;s a long way from the vision of mobility that Intel and other big backers of WiMax promoted for several years. Even an Intel executive on a panel with the Cisco executives played up WiMax as an alternative to DSL (digital subscriber line) or cable broadband. That&#39;s likely to be the role of WiMax for the foreseeable future in markets with poor or no wired infrastructure, said Sriram Viswanathan, general manager of the WiMax Program Office at Intel Capital. But he&#39;s not giving up on mobile WiMax there.&quot;We see that as almost an entry step for these markets to get onto the mobility bandwagon,&quot; Viswanathan said.The carriers in developing countries are insisting on gear based on IEEE 802.16e, the standard for mobile WiMax, rather than on an earlier specification limited to fixed services, said Roger Dorf, president and CEO of Navini. They want the capability to eventually offer a mobile service, especially because many such carriers have both wired and wireless divisions, he said. But right now, Cisco sees WiMax giving many residents of poorer countries, who overwhelmingly still use desktop PCs, their first broadband experience. Desktops will dominate those markets for the next two years, in Dorf&#39;s view.Cisco isn&#39;t dismissing WiMax for advanced countries, just identifying the most attractive market to start with, Galloway said. However, the executives don&#39;t see much potential in unlicensed WiMax, such as deployments across large enterprise campuses. The unlicensed variety will remain a niche product, primarily for point-to-point backhaul links, Galloway said.Mobile WiMax is designed so it can be used without an external antenna or gateway box, so a user should be able to take a notebook or other portable device anywhere in the network&#39;s coverage area and connect. But some analysts say this &quot;nomadic&quot; capability is a far cry from the true mobility that cellular technologies have been designed to deliver from the beginning. WiMax will complement but not compete with future high-speed versions of 3G systems, namely LTE (Long-Term Evolution), the next step in the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) technology track, according to Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates.Cisco isn&#39;t taking sides in the next-generation radio fight, said Larry Lang, vice president and general manager of Cisco&#39;s Services and Mobility Business Unit. Cisco will win in any case because it supplies the IP (Internet Protocol) packet infrastructure that will link different access networks together, he said.The company does see an affinity between WiMax and Wi-Fi, where it is a dominant player. Both are IP-based and standardized, and no one company has dominated innovation in either technology, Galloway said. Simply the advent of a new type of portable broadband experience is good news for the network giant.&quot;If we drive innovation on end devices and applications, and we drive the penetration and ubiquity of networks ... we create enormous value for Cisco ... for the ecosystem ... and for our customers,&quot; Galloway said.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - The process to standardize a rival to the broadband wireless WiMax technology is back on track although the delay and scandal around it could present a serious set back to the effort. On Tuesday, standards setting body the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) announced changes that would allow the 802.20 working group, suspended in June, to continue to develop the standard. The group will elect all new officers and resume working once a chair is approved, which IEEE hopes will happen by Nov. 12. Participants in the group will also be required to disclose all of their affiliations, including any company that pays, employs or sponsors the member. Some experts warn, however, that the changes could be coming too late. "Whatever the reality behind it, 802.20 is now so heavily associated with Qualcomm that it will not be perceived as an independent standard," said Caroline Gabriel, an analyst with Rethink Research. The IEEE put the new measures in place in hopes of correcting the problems that lead to the suspension of the group in June. At the time, the standards body had received several complaints, including some that accused the independent analyst who served as chairman of 802.20 of being paid by Qualcomm, an accusation he later confirmed. In addition, the IEEE said the group's activities had become unusually contentious. The 802.20 group began as an offshoot of 802.16, the standard that forms the basis of WiMax. The goal of the 802.16 effort initially was to build a fixed broadband wireless technology that would compete with DSL (digital subscriber line) and other wireline technologies. As work progressed, however, 802.16 members decided that in the future, the standard should be capable of supporting mobile or portable access as well. But some of the members didn't want to have to build the mobility feature on top of a standard that was originally created for a fixed application. Consequently, they split off to create 802.20, a mobile broadband wireless standard that could be created from scratch and would be designed to support broadband wireless access for users moving at very high speeds, such as on a train. While 802.16 emphasizes throughput speeds, 802.20 emphasizes supporting access at very fast user mobility. IntelÂ is a major backer of the 802.16 process and ArrayCommÂ and Flarion have been heavily involved in the 802.20 process. Intel competitorÂ Qualcomm acquired FlarionÂ last year. Qualcomm is best known for its development of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and strict licensing policies. The process of completing the 802.20 standard was already far behind its 802.16 competitor when the suspension occurred. The specification for the fixed version of 802.16 is finished with products currently shipping and the mobile version of 802.16 was ratified late last year. The 802.20 standard will also have to compete with the developing cellular standards, such as HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).
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By James Connell  Eric Pfanner contributed reporting from London.   *  WiMax, the long-range wireless Internet standard backed by technology giants like Alcatel-Lucent, Intel, Nokia and Samsung, is unlikely to be appear as a new feature on cellphones anytime soon.
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CTO outlines future of WiMAX in the USA Sprint Nextel is on schedule to launch its WiMAX service at the end of April, but won't be subsidising devices or requiring long-term contracts.â¦
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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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Intel Corp. expects its first-generation WiMax chips to spawn devices for wireless broadband end-users that cost less than $200 and won&#39;t require a visit