Posted 11/10/09 at 07:27:03 AM by Paul Lilly

Sprint feels awfully confident in Clearwire's WiMax 4G technology, enough so to pump another $1 billion into it, Combined with a $500 million investment from Comcast, Intel, Time Warner, and Bright House, that brings the latest round of funding to $1.5 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As if billion dollar investments needed any additional intrigue, what makes this one so interesting (and risky) is that Clearwire and Sprint are the only two U.S. carriers putting faith in WiMax to usher in 4G wireless broadband. Verizon and AT&T, who happen to be the two biggest heavyweights, are banking on rival technology LTE for their 4G networks.

The gamble is huge for Sprint. Should Clearwire burn through its cash, which the company has been known to do, it will be up to Sprint to invest even more if it's to keep majority control. Sounds simple enough, except that Sprint's net debt was already approaching $16 billion at the end of last quarter.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 08:30:54 AM by Paul Lilly

Following up its first WiMax deployment in Baltimore in September of last year, Sprint on Monday launched WiMax service in Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. This in addition to the three markets being served in North Carolina.

And Sprint isn't even close to be finished. By the time 2009 comes to an end, the wireless provider says it will roll out WiMax in Honolulu, Seattle, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas.

"Sprint continues to lead the charge in rolling out wireless 4G in cities across America and the momentum continues to build," Todd Rowley, vice president of Sprint 4G, said in a statement. "Our aggressive expansion of Sprint 4G will include many new devices and capabilities that create increased performance and productivity while enhancing personal lifestyles on the go."

Looking ahead to next year, Sprint expects to launch service in several more markets, including Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.

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Posted 10/22/09 at 06:24:54 PM by Bart Salisbury

It’s coming--kind of, sort of. Clearwire, Comcast and Sprint plan to bring us 4G mobile broadband service in the next several weeks, provided we’re lucky enough to live in one of the few locations that will initially be blessed with the service; locations that seem connected by virtue of their being disconnected.

According to Clearwire’s press release all three providers will have service available in more than 25 markets, covering over 30 million people. Checking out coverage maps there’s not a whole lot to get excited about. Much of Clearwire and Sprint’s coverage, geographically, is in suburban Texas. The only cities, and I use the term loosely, are Las Vegas, Boise, Atlanta, Portland, and Seattle. The only efforts to tackle legitimate urban areas are Chicago and Philadelphia.

So, if you happen to live in Milledgeville, Georgia, population 18,757, you’ve got Sprint’s 4G service waiting for you. But, if you live in Los Angeles, California, population 3,834,340, you’re out of luck.

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Posted 09/25/09 at 09:25:55 PM by Ryan Whitwam

The deployment of new wireless standards is usually painfully slow. If Verizon is to be believed however, the rollout of the carrier’s LTE network could be lightning-fast by comparison. Verizon CTO Tony Melone said recently that the company had no intention of “teasing” customers with tiny LTE coverage areas, and promised the rollout “will be as close to all-at-once as possible.”

LTE is a 4G standard that will replace Verizon’s current CDMA/EV-DO network. LTE will be able to use a significant part of the existing infrastructure, meaning faster deployment. Verizon hasn’t given any specific dates, but says that there will be 25 to 30 markets covered with LTE in 2010 alone. They expect their entire network to be switched over to LTE within two to three years.

Malone indicated that Verizon had already certified 55 devices for use on their LTE network, but many are not consumer level. When complete, the new network will support various types of smartphones, and other devices that require data connections, like e-readers.

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Posted 09/15/09 at 07:25:38 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Prepaid carrier MetroPCS will launch its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in the second half of 2010. The company today announced its choice of vendors for the launch of its 4G service. It has chosen Ericsson as its infrastructure partner and Samsung as the provider of its first “dual-mode LTE/CDMA smartphone.”

With this announcement, MetroPCS has stolen a march on Verizon, as the latter plans to offer such a LTE handset only in 2011, although it too plans to launch its LTE service in 2010. 

“As the Internet goes ‘mobile’ we are excited to be at the forefront of this wireless evolution with the building out of our 4G broadband data services. We anticipate to begin offering our 4G LTE services and a dual-mode LTE/CDMA smartphone in our major metropolitan markets in late 2010,” said Roger D. Linquist, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of MetroPCS.

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Posted 09/09/09 at 04:03:02 PM by Jason Barry

AT&T announced today that six cities will receive an infrastructural upgrade to the HSPA 7.2 (7.2 megabits per second) service by the end of this year. The cities fortunate enough are: Charlotte, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas and Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; and Miami, Florida.

AT&T hopes to extend this same service to 90% of its current 3G area by the end of 2011 stepping into 25 other major cities by the close of 2010. Further, they claim that the infrastructure upgrade should also be robust enough to handle the throughput of next-generation 4G service, expected to be suitable for deployment in 2011.

The company has been in the crosshairs lately as their current 3G network is being saturated with the exclusive use of 9 million iPhone users in addition to the 20 million other smartphone users on the grid. Still iPhone users await features such as internet tethering and multimedia messaging while AT&T continues to fortify the network for the intense throughput they require.

Image credit: AT&T logo, USB 3.0 logo

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Posted 08/18/09 at 03:38:21 PM by Andy Salisbury

Drawing ever closer to their goal of having a nationwide Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G wireless network, Verizon completed their first LTE calls in Boston and Seattle earlier this month.

The calls consisted of small talk, streaming video, file uploads and downloads, as well as some Internet browsing. According to Tony Melone, Verizon’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, “Verizon Wireless, with outstanding cooperation from our partner suppliers, is fully committed to harnessing the power of LTE over our 700MHz spectrum. This combination of state-of-the art technology and prime spectrum will soon make a ubiquitous, highly mobile, super-fast broadband experience a reality for customers. This significant milestone in our LTE 4G network testing, exemplified by the first data calls in Boston and Seattle, further validates our early support and decision to select LTE as the standard for our next-generation wireless broadband network.”

Verizon hopes to extend their LTE 4G network to 30 more markets in 2010, which they claim will cover 100 million people. This would be the last major milestone before their nationwide network, set to appear in 2013.

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Posted 06/21/09 at 06:45:44 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Baltimore became the first US city to be blessed with a commercial WiMax service in October, 2008. Though WiMax hasn’t spread like a flu across the country since then, the rate of implementation is expected to pick up a bit in the near future. Clearwire’s WiMax network has now become operational in Atlanta, Georgia and anyone living their can avail the service by purchasing a USB modem and a daily/monthly subscription.

The WiMax network in Atlanta is the biggest of its kind in the U.S and encompasses an area measuring 1,200 square miles. The speeds are expected to hover between four and six Mbps on an average with 15Mbps being the upper limit. Separate USB modems are available for desktops and laptops.

If laptop users will have to fork out $59.99 for the modem, their desktop-doting counterparts will have to pay $79.99 for the desktop-compliant modem. The latter species can also rent the device for a monthly sum of $4.99. The monthly subscription plan costs $40 whereas the service can also be accessed for $10 daily.

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