U.S.: WiMAX is here, proclaims Sprint and Intel

by Jeff Orr, Editor
Mobile Broadband News

“It’s not slideware - WiMAX is here now,” said Sprint chief Dan Hesse as he addressed the crowd assembled in Baltimore, Maryland today for the formal launch of Sprint XOHM mobile broadband service. “It will take time to build it everywhere. Sprint will be launching 3G/4G multimode devices later this year for ubiquitous coverage.” What will people do with 4G services? “The killer application is video,” added Hesse. “And a lot of other great applications too. For example, public workers can pull down detailed, bandwidth-intensive architectural plans.”

Executives from Intel and the XOHM business spoke about the milestone and brought vendor and ecosystem partners on stage to be recognized during the event that culminated in the “ribbon cutting” of cables. The ritual signified the focus on delivering multi-megabit speeds to business and consumer customers without the restriction of location associated with DSL, cable and leased copper T1 lines.

Photo credit: Kenya Allmond via Flickr

Products for the XOHM service are available through a range of Baltimore locations, including: e-commerce sites like Amazon.com and Newegg.com, independent retailers, six Best Buy electronics stores, area shopping mall kiosks, telesales, and door-to-door. Clearwire USA has used the grassroots model of door-to-door sales in many of its markets with great success. In addition to the Samsung ExpressCard and ZyXEL CPE modem already shipping, ZTE’s USB dongle and Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition are expected to premier in October. Eight notebook models are currently available: four from Lenovo, two from Acer, and one each from ASUS and Toshiba. Dell, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony all have plans to make WiMAX-enabled notebooks available during 2009. XOHM’s West also noted that 20 additional devices are in qualification with Sprint now.