* WiMAX gets shot in the arm from Sprint Nextel
By now, you’ve likely heard that it’s official: A major mobile network operator has committed to offering mobile WiMAX services. It’s a relief to know that the WiMAX-enabled laptops scheduled to ship from Intel starting next year will, indeed, eventually have a nationwide network service to connect to!
Sprint Nextel, with substantial nationwide 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings, is the carrier that has stepped up to the plate. The company had long tested a number of so-called 4G technologies for supporting future high-bandwidth mobile multimedia capabilities in its spectrum. Last week, that company said that – working with partners Motorola, Samsung, and Intel – it had chosen mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005 technology) as the foundation for a nationwide 4G WiMAX overlay network to its CDMA-based 3G services.
The definition of “4G” is somewhat amorphous. It implies a packet-switched wireless network with enough bandwidth to support video alongside voice and data and one with a different air interface from previous wireless network iterations. WiMAX uses an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) air interface that puts signals in wide network channels for efficiencies that lower the cost of providing broadband services, according to Sprint Nextel CTO Barry West. The company adds that it is adopting IP over the air interface so that its mobile network and the Internet become joined.
Sprint Nextel plans to have broadband wireless services in customer trials in late 2007 and commercially deployed to reach about 100 million potential subscribers in 2008. The services will provide users with 2Mbps to 4Mbps wireless connections (downstream) that they can carry around with them.
Some very large, highly vertical mobile enterprises have expressed concern to me that their significant custom investments in mobile devices that support older network technologies (such as GPRS or 1XRTT) will be cut short as new iterations of 3G and, now, 4G technologies continue rolling out. Many of these traditional mobile data applications don’t require the bandwidth afforded by the newer networks, and some verticals worry that the GPRS and 1XRTT network support – which thousands, if not millions, of their handsets currently support – might get dropped.
Sprint Nextel has said it will continue to invest heartily in its EV-DO high-speed 3G network and that access devices going forward will contain connections to multiple network services. But it didn’t mention the future of 1XRTT.
