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Telecommunications Sprint Nextel's $US3b 4G wireless plan good news for WiMAX
Telecommunications Sprint Nextel's $US3b 4G wireless plan good news for WiMAX | Sprint Nextel's $US3b 4G wireless plan good news for WiMAX |
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| Written by Stuart Corner | |
| Wednesday, 09 August 2006 | |
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The company will use its 2.5GHz spectrum holdings to develop a nationwide network infrastructure able to offer wireless broadband data services to up to 100 million people by 2008 and will work with Intel, Motorola and Samsung to help make chipsets widely available for new consumer electronics devices. Even modest success for a project of this scale would generate demand for chipsets and devices sufficient to significantly reduce prices. Sprint Nextel's confidence in the technology to commit to a project of this scale will, in itself, be a huge fillip to the nascent WiMAX industry. Sprint president and CEO, Gary Forsee, portrayed the initiative as "linking the incredible potential of [wireless connectivity and the Internet]...[to] give customers the power to harness business information and personal entertainment easily and inexpensively - and in ways that they will one day wonder how they lived without. The company plans to launch services in trial markets by the end of 2007 with plans to deploy a network that reaches as many as 100 million people in 2008. It expects WiMAX offer a cost-per-megabit and performance advantage that "reflects a substantial improvement in the comparable costs for the current 3G mobile broadband offerings." However, Sprint Nextel says it will continue to invest in and offer access to its current wireless and Sprint Power Vision mobile broadband networks. Samsung Telecommunications America will be a primary mobile WiMAX infrastructure supplier to Sprint Nextel and will also deliver dual-mode devices supporting Mobile WiMAX and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, designed to enable Sprint's Mobile WiMAX users to use Sprint Nextel's existing 3G network resources. Motorola and Samsung will also support Sprint's current and CDMA/EV-DO network technologies by creating multimode devices that will support services on both the 4G network and the 3G network in areas outside the planned 4G coverage, and will provide voice service using the core 3G network. {moscomment}
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