Sprint to 'Soft Launch' WiMax Network

[winterspan]

Hopefully Apple goes with HSPA/LTE in their notebooks. Especially considering they are doing this with the iPhone.

Global coverage today.
Proven higher speeds at cell edge.
Amazing long range rural coverage capabilities.
14.4Mbit today. (active throughout my whole country)
40+Mbit 2008 (already being trialled in my state)
100+Mbit downlink / 50Mbit uplink with LTE (2009)

Seamless handing over between the whole LTE/HSPA+/HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS family of technologies.

AT&T and Verizon are the carriers supporting this in the US.

All correct... I don't understand WTF the deal is with WIMAX? I mean come on... All the info I have found quotes speeds of 2-3 megabits / sec. 2-3mbps?? Thats it ? For a next generation wireless network??? I just dont get it. 4G/LTE will blow this out of the water!

Can you link to something that backs this up? Unless they've moved the CN tower to Luxembourg I don't think there's anywhere in the world that has the theoretical maximum HSPA rate across the whole country. Higher speeds at cell edge is only interesting if we know the cell size... HSPA is a GSM technology so the cells are rather small compared to WiMAX. LTE is still being argued in committee.
Granted all my information is from US centric sources-- I'd be interested in anything you can send our way.

I'm almost positive that Australia has 14.4mbps HSDPA across like 98% of the population. Also many Nordic countries have at least some form of HSDPA across the vast majority of their population. Not to mention Asia....

I would like your comment in response to what I wrote to the poster above.. Why is everyone infatuated with WIMAX? I understand the coverage area is greater than UMTS/HSPA, but with speeds of 2-3mbps for a next gen wireless network??? Couldn't the USA in particular rollout HSPA/HSPA+/HSOPA on the 700mhz freq and get close to the same transceiver/km^2 as WIMAX?
Does anyone else know the answer to this?

 

[FX120]

"It's like an out of town preview only it's in town...

....


So when is opening night?"


Anyway, back on topic:

I swear by the time the damn iPhone gets 3G everyone else will be on to bigger and better things...

 

[Analog Kid]

I'm almost positive that Australia has 14.4mbps HSDPA across like 98% of the population. Also many Nordic countries have at least some form of HSDPA across the vast majority of their population. Not to mention Asia....

I would like your comment in response to what I wrote to the poster above.. Why is everyone infatuated with WIMAX? I understand the coverage area is greater than UMTS/HSPA, but with speeds of 2-3mbps for a next gen wireless network??? Couldn't the USA in particular rollout HSPA/HSPA+/HSOPA on the 700mhz freq and get close to the same transceiver/km^2 as WIMAX?
Does anyone else know the answer to this?

WiMAX, like the others, has an upgrade path. The current tech maxes out at around 70Mbit/sec, up and down. HSDPA maxes out at 14.4Mbit down, 5.76Mbit up. In both cases, those are theoretical, "I'm the only one in the cell and I'm next to the tower" type numbers.

People are enamored with WiMAX because it's here. It's already being used in last-mile deployments to replace wireline. Mobile WiMax is just the next step. While there are HSPA deployments, they don't match WiMAX capacity. Different vendors may split their bandwidth differently, but WiMAX has better total capacity.

Granted, Korea keeps a finger in every pie, these days, WiBro is their WiMAX network.

Wikipedia has a list of current WiMAX deployment (most of them fixed installs).

 

[Darkroom]

this might be like when apple started sleeping with starbucks with iTunes Store connectivity on iPhone/iPodTouch... now when apple releases their TABLET in january, they can use WiMax to give it a push...

 

[nordesmic]

I'm almost positive that Australia has 14.4mbps HSDPA across like 98% of the population. Also many Nordic countries have at least some form of HSDPA across the vast majority of their population. Not to mention Asia....

You are right. Here in Australia Telstra's network covers 98.8% of the population at 14.4 Mbps (They refer to it as 'Next-g').

Telstra criticised the former Government's decision to fund a WiMax network that duplicated a lot of the Next-g infrastructure.

 

[Clive At Five]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hate to be a nay-sayer (and not that I haven't been wrong before) but I just don't feel Apple will pick it up so early. I'd be willing to bet that an MWSF-iteration of this sub-notebook won't have it. I WOULD be willing to bet that sometime H2'08, Apple will start releasing it in their notebooks - long enough for them to partially gauge reception but still early enough as to not miss the boat.

Also at work here, is that I just don't think people are hot to pay a telcom for wireless internet, especially when you can almost always find WiFi for free if you live in a populated area... A poor boy like me (who doesn't go on business trips) would just say, hell, I'll go to the coffee shop up the street -- or just stay at home where I already pay a very reasonable price for fast internet. Yay, 8Mbps and 802.11n!

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a market for it, and eventually it'll replace all these silly WiFi networks we have all over the place, but just not overnight. I've witnessed far too many "revolutionary product" launches to believe anything like that could happen.

-Clive

 

[takao]

yeah wimax is one of those technologies which intel has been beating the drums for like ... forever ... and it's still not catching on ...

more than 90% of the population can have access to HSDPA around here so (by 2-3 different providers) and the next generation will come sooner or later

how long have we been hearing "wimax will come next year" by now ? i think its equal to "next year is going to be the year of linux on the desktop" already

 

[takao]

Also at work here, is that I just don't think people are hot to pay a telcom for wireless internet, especially when you can almost always find WiFi for free if you live in a populated area... A poor boy like me (who doesn't go on business trips) would just say, hell, I'll go to the coffee shop up the street -- or just stay at home where I already pay a very reasonable price for fast internet. Yay, 8Mbps and 802.11n!

well around here people actually do it (over HSDPA) ... and it sells like hot cakes since many people with laptops then simply replace that with one of those small usb boxes which they can use everywhere no matter where they are and they always have their own internet without bothering about finding free hotspots (something nearly impossible around here)

edit: you can get a transfer volume of 10-15 GB (enough for majority of people) for around 20-25 euro per month with hsdpa

 

[Clive At Five]

It is a pilot program, you can't expect it to be nationwide overnight.

I wasn't expecting it to. It's exactly as you say. WiMAX won't be deployed overnight, and it'll take a long time before this even reaches 25% of the population.

If Apple has been this sluggish the incorporate BluRay (with still no launch in sight), which is emerging as victor in the next-gen video wars and has been on sale for years (plural) now, what makes you think they'll be so quick to pick up something like WiMAX?

-Clive

 

[nicorojas]

how long have we been hearing "wimax will come next year" by now ? i think its equal to "next year is going to be the year of linux on the desktop" already

Actually, WIMAX is coming next week...

 

[diamond.g]

I wasn't expecting it to. It's exactly as you say. WiMAX won't be deployed overnight, and it'll take a long time before this even reaches 25% of the population.

If Apple has been this sluggish the incorporate BluRay (with still no launch in sight), which is emerging as victor in the next-gen video wars and has been on sale for years (plural) now, what makes you think they'll be so quick to pick up something like WiMAX?

-Clive

It is even less likely to happen since Apple doesn't use the standard Intel platforms (Apple doesn't use Intel Wireless stuff). I would be suprised if they incorporated WiMax considering they are partners with AT&T and haven't mentioned one word about Sprint (nor Sprint about them).

 

[Digitalclips]

Microwave internet; won't that liquify our brains? If so, MAN that'd be bad.

But useful to heat up that tepid coffee by your side though

 

[mcmadhatter]

WiMax is here (as of next week), LTE will be 2-3 years away at least. There will be advantages to both, WiMax is here now, it can serve more people at a higher rate than HS(D/U)PA, and is perfect for provideing mobile broadband. In my opinion providers with existing UMTS based deployements will be fine with waiting for 3 years and upgrading to LTE. New providers, and those who skipped the rubbish that is UMTS will go for WiMax. I reckon most people (in countries with UMTS) will have an LTE phone and a WiMax laptop. Elsewhere in the emerging markets, I can see LTE being skipped, WiMax being provided now with handsets (that maybe support voip) as a cheap way of providing broadband and telephones in countries where the copper wires simply do not exist.

LTE's capacity benefits (in Mb/s) will only be providable over a much smaller area than wimax.

 

[Digital Skunk]

yeah it is interesting. but i don't use Sprint, so i wonder if at&t has anything similar in the works?

I think AT&T will, but they may cripple it in some way or in some fashion just to get you to pay more. I am no big fan of AT&T and their lack of insurance for smartphones or the iPhone, so it steams me up that Apple could have chosen such a wishy washy company to do business with.

Honestly, I hope that this launch proves that Apple made the "not the best choice" as the rising sales of other smartphones and regular phones has already done.

Welcome to the Social?

I am actually looking forward to this, AT&T is prohibiting progress like this.

Amen. So is much of the business world that deals with cell phones in the US. I am surprised that Sprint is even offering the service to downtown Baltimore City Maryland.... (my home town... yes I love Old Bay Seasoning) where a lot of us use Sprint or Verizon and hence, the shear lack of iPhones walking around. But it does show that Sprint is hitting where they should, the business users that need the power and speed of broadband, and the individual user with a smartphone that also needs said power and speed.

Sprint already has the fastest and widest network in many areas, and from what I know it's the cheapest, so now it will be even faster and hopefully even cheaper. So hopefully Apple won't make another mistake and leave WiMax off of their future MBs and MBPs or I really believe that I will have to get myself and my significant other a different brand that does offer it.

Sprint's EVDO already kicks ass, and I hope to one day be able to get a WiMax Treo from them within the next year or two(hopefully running a modern Linux based OS). I almost got WiMax from Clearwire when I moved back to Dayton, but the reports weren't that great.

You said it! And the Treo is the staple of Sprint's business users group. I am hoping that Palm got off their butts and put money where they should have... in their outdated, circa 1995 Palm OS. It's terrible.... I mean WAY past old. And I am glad the Foleo was a flop, showing the world that the director of any company can make mistakes.

Now that they have stated that they are working on a more consistent OS to run their smartphones, hopefully we will see both a shiny new and intuitive OS from Palm, and very powerful out of the box, full featured Treo smartphones or another breed all together. I honestly wouldn't mind seeing Palm go all out and build a device that is limitless (and probably large) that give us all the features ever made for a small handheld device, much like the ones built from HTC.

Sprint will be "soft-launching" their new WiMax wireless network known as XOHM later this week, according to MacNN. The initial plans will make make WiMax networks available in downtown Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

The medium sized business hubs of America, the perfect place to field test new technology for the masses. Now my city is full of Guinea Pigs.

All we need now is a slamming new phone from HTC, Palm, or Samsung to go with all this new broadband connectivity, and a new ultra slim ultra portable ultra battery life MacBook Pro from Apple.

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

That Quicktime is going from 7.3 to 7.4 is not a particularly compelling news item. Nor is Office going GM when its long been announced that it is coming at MWSF.

WiMax changes a lot of things, and will be built into many laptops, just as Wifi is built into many laptops now. Verizon's version is their "open" CDMA network. Sprint Nextel is going to be WiMax.

This is relevant to anyone with a laptop or mobile phone, Mac users included.

arn

Touche.

 

[Analog Kid]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hate to be a nay-sayer (and not that I haven't been wrong before) but I just don't feel Apple will pick it up so early. I'd be willing to bet that an MWSF-iteration of this sub-notebook won't have it. I WOULD be willing to bet that sometime H2'08, Apple will start releasing it in their notebooks - long enough for them to partially gauge reception but still early enough as to not miss the boat.

Also at work here, is that I just don't think people are hot to pay a telcom for wireless internet, especially when you can almost always find WiFi for free if you live in a populated area... A poor boy like me (who doesn't go on business trips) would just say, hell, I'll go to the coffee shop up the street -- or just stay at home where I already pay a very reasonable price for fast internet. Yay, 8Mbps and 802.11n!

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a market for it, and eventually it'll replace all these silly WiFi networks we have all over the place, but just not overnight. I've witnessed far too many "revolutionary product" launches to believe anything like that could happen.

-Clive

I think I'm with you on this, actually. I can't really see Apple putting dedicated hardware in their laptop for this. I'm thinking of it more as a plug-in modem...

 

[winterspan]

Apple should go the Dell route.. *GASP*

Although they have this iPhone deal with AT&T, I think Apple should copy what Dell and others are doing by offering all three cell providers 3G data cards built in to their laptops. That way, no matter what your situation is, you can choose the best provider that fits your needs. Some people may have existing cellular contracts (most people) and might be able to receive a package discount of some kind. Others, like myself, only have access to the 3G data services from one of the companies. In my case, my area doesn't get AT&T HSDPA/3G service and Sprints EVDO has a bad coverage area, so Verizon is my only option for good data services.

From a hardware/integration standpoint, I don't think supporting a couple of cellular broadband internal PCIe cards would be a big issue for their OS division, I mean in regards to drivers, customer support, etc.
Also, I'm sure this level of choice/options would be refreshing for Apple customers used to being shoe-horned into certain categories, but without too much complexity or difficulty.
Then, in the future, if WIMAX gets a foothold, they can just add driver support for a new card and add them to the laptop line.

Anyone else think this is a good idea? other thoughts?

 

[retroneo]

Can you link to something that backs this up? Unless they've moved the CN tower to Luxembourg I don't think there's anywhere in the world that has the theoretical maximum HSPA rate across the whole country. Higher speeds at cell edge is only interesting if we know the cell size... HSPA is a GSM technology so the cells are rather small compared to WiMAX. LTE is still being argued in committee.

Granted all my information is from US centric sources-- I'd be interested in anything you can send our way.

In Australia, a country of similar size to the US, we have a nationwide 14.4Mbit HSDPA/HSUPA network branded Telstra NextG. It amazingly covers 98.8% of the population (over 25% of the land mass).

It is the worlds largest wireless network. It is also the worlds fastest.
They activated 14.4Mbit in February this year.

The network was built in 10 months from concept (paperwork) to completion. Remarkable.

There are also three other HSDPA networks whose coverage focuses mainly on the cities and their peak speed is 3.6Mbit.

We also have several WiMax networks in rural areas which have dismal performance.

 

[theBB]

It is the worlds largest wireless network. It is also the worlds fastest. They activated 14.4Mbit in February this year.

Is that shared across all users in the same cell? Is that theoretically possible, but never ever happens kind of bit rate, such as 11MB/s with 802.11b? (I've never got more than 2-3Mbps or so.) How many users can be supported by each tower? Concentrating on just one number is misleading.

 

[tuneman07]

In Australia, a country of similar size to the US, we have a nationwide 14.4Mbit HSDPA/HSUPA network branded Telstra NextG. It amazingly covers 98.8% of the population (over 25% of the land mass).

It is the worlds largest wireless network. It is also the worlds fastest.
They activated 14.4Mbit in February this year.

The network was built in 10 months from concept (paperwork) to completion. Remarkable.

There are also three other HSDPA networks whose coverage focuses mainly on the cities and their peak speed is 3.6Mbit.

We also have several WiMax networks in rural areas which have dismal performance.

Thats pretty cool, why don't we have this in the U.S.???

 

[rockosmodurnlif]

In Australia, a country of similar size to the US, we have a nationwide 14.4Mbit HSDPA/HSUPA network branded Telstra NextG. It amazingly covers 98.8% of the population (over 25% of the land mass).

It is the worlds largest wireless network. It is also the worlds fastest.
They activated 14.4Mbit in February this year.

The network was built in 10 months from concept (paperwork) to completion. Remarkable.

There are also three other HSDPA networks whose coverage focuses mainly on the cities and their peak speed is 3.6Mbit.

We also have several WiMax networks in rural areas which have dismal performance.

One user's experience (apparently the software is buggy and customer service is ... ineffectual)
Telstra vows to fix NextG
Judge rules Telstra ads for NextG coverage misleading (apparently it's not as good as CDMA)

They're interesting reads especially the user experience. I'm sure they're just working out the kinks though.

 

[Analog Kid]

In Australia, a country of similar size to the US, we have a nationwide 14.4Mbit HSDPA/HSUPA network branded Telstra NextG. It amazingly covers 98.8% of the population (over 25% of the land mass).

You mean this one?:

BigPond® now runs on Australia's only 14.4Mbps national wireless broadband network4. Download files, photos, games and more with typical speeds of 550kbps to 3Mbps

1. The G Fast plans will have a download speed up to 256kbps and an upload speed of up to 128kbps. These speeds are a theoretical maximum. Actual speeds will be slower. The Super G Fast plans will have an average download speed of 550kbps - 1.5Mbps and an upload speed bursting to 384kbps. Speeds may vary due to congestion, distance from the cell, local conditions, hardware and software and other factors.

Not saying it isn't better than what covers most of the US right now, but it's not what you're saying it is. Keep your numbers in perspective-- don't compare "theoretical" with "typical".

I hope Sprint doesn't cap usage at 10 hours or 3GB, like these guys are. Overpricing this will kill it.

 

[diamond.g]

Thats pretty cool, why don't we have this in the U.S.???

Telco's have no real incentive to implement something "so costly". The only other excuse I can think of is that USA is too big.

 

[John Musbach]

Sprint will be "soft-launching" their new WiMax wireless network known as XOHM later this week, according to MacNN. The initial plans will make make WiMax networks available in downtown Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.

The official launch is reported to be in the 2nd quarter of 2008 when a number of WiMax enabled laptops are expected to be released. Sprint expects 100 million Americans to be within WiMax range by the end of 2008.

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a next generation wireless technology that promises inexpensive wireless broadband. A USAToday article discussing the new technology reveals that that the network will be "open" with no long term service contracts and customers will be allowed to use any WiMax device on the network. Critics of the service, however, believe that existing 3G cellular technologies, such as HSPA, already fill this need.

Of particular interest is that Intel has been a strong proponent of the technology and will start building WiMax enabled chipsets for its upcoming Montevina platform which replaces Santa Rosa. This is no guarantee that Apple will necessarily use Intel's wireless chipset, as they are not using them in the current iteration of MacBooks.

While Apple has made no public commitments to WiMax technology, the possible introduction of sub-notebook MacBook so close to WiMax's launch has surely raised these possibilities at Apple headquarters. This, however, all remains speculative, as no credible rumors have yet placed WiMax technology in Apple hardware.

Article Link

This is great news after reports that WiMax would be no more: http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cach...print+ends+clearwire&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us . I am very happy to hear that Spring will be continuing on with their wimax plans despite setbacks they have encountered. Lets hope their ambitious plans for widespread access will come true perhaps allowing internet access anywhere to become as mainstream as phone access anywhere now is.

 

[ntrigue]

'Clearwire' Rises From The Ashes Of Previous Failed WiMax JV

The merger is complete as of 8:30AM. 14.22 billion investment in making the US a hotspot! Will we see WiMax with Nehalem? I think so...

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/05/clearwire_rises.html

It's almost poetic. Like a phoenix reincarnated from the ashes of its former self, Sprint and Clearwire have formed a new joint venture to roll out mobile WiMax to the masses. And this time its more than just words. The companies are teaming up with a handful of cable operators, as well as Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) (man, Google is just everywhere these days), to forge a $14.22 billion entity known as Clearwire.