The rumors (which, again, I never spread) that Sprint would turn on its first XOHM city, Baltimore, next week, turned out to be off by a few days. And folks in that town woke up today to the fastest wireless wide-area production broadband network in the country (and one of the fastest in the world), along with interesting pricing and the promise of more cities and more subscriber units – including a dual-mode CDMA/WiMAX handset – shortly. Quick analysis: This deployment is aimed at consumers, not businesses, as, unless you do all of your business in Baltimore, this ain’t going to work for most of us. Throughput – the press release notes 2-4 Mbps – is in line with expectations, as is the pricing, at US$25-30/month ($25 for fixed, and $30 for mobile). A surprising feature is a $10 daily price, a la municipal Wi-Fi, but I don’t think this is going to be a big seller. There’s also a “Pick 2 for Life” family plan of sorts; not a huge discount, but anything helps. And they note no requirement for long-term contracts or cancellation fees, a surprising and most welcome plus.
The XOHM site talks about other cities coming on line soon, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., followed by Dallas, Forth Worth, Boston, Providence, and Philadelphia. But without a critical mass of say, the top 30 municipalities, with coverage extending beyond city centers and well into the suburbs, XOHM isn’t going to compete for business users with broadband offerings from the other carriers, even if it is (for the moment) faster and cheaper. And it remains to be seen how the service and pricing will be affected by the transfer of ownership to Clearwire, which is plowing ahead.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of this effort. Economic times are tough, competition is fierce, the number of consumers who will pay for a service like this is unclear, and there’s enough uncertainty to give potential buyers pause. Still, if I lived in Baltimore, I’d at least stop by for a demo.
