Sprint Nextel Goes to the Wimax
by: paulxty
Why WiMax?
But the advantage of Mobile WiMax isn’t just that individual download speeds will rise. It’s that Sprint’s virtual “pipes” will be able to support more simultaneous users at less cost, West said, and that WiMax chips cost “around 1/10? the price of those of competing technologies.
Sprint will deploy WiMax on 2.5 Ghz spectrum covering 85% of the nation’s top 100 markets. West said Sprint also looked at Flarion’s Flash-OFDM technology (which we reviewed when Nextel tested it in North Carolina) and IPWireless’ UMTS-TDD technology, but neither were good fits.
Flash-OFDM “worked extremely well … [but] it’s only available in what’s called frequency division duplexing, and the spectrum we own is more conducive to time division duplexing,” West said. UMTS-TDD, meanwhile, didn’t have the “ecosystem” Sprint was looking for.
WiMax has traditionally been considered a competitor to cable Internet access for homes. But Sprint’s joint ventures with major cable companies, including Time Warner and Comcast, will continue, Forsee said, with the cable companies having the option to participate in 4G.
