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| Sprint Nextel Embraces WiMAX |
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Unwired February 2007 • Vol.5 Issue 2 Page(s) 28-29 in print issue |
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Sprint Nextel Embraces WiMAX What It Means For You |
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In December 2005 when the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) approved the Mobile WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, 802.16e-2005) standard, industry analysts began debating how it would affect the mobile marketplace. Because WiMAX is much faster than current cellular broadband technologies and offers wider coverage than Wi-Fi, it stood to reason that WiMAX would have an impact on both mobile broadband and Wi-Fi. Nevertheless, many experts predicted cellular providers might be hesitant to adopt WiMAX because they already had so much invested in other broadband solutions. Furthermore, broadband data revenue represented a fraction (but a growing fraction) of the income providers gleaned from voice subscribers, so some questioned whether providers could justify the investment. Sprint Nextel Corp. turned that prediction on its ear in August 2006 when it announced it would build a fully functioning WiMAX infrastructure by 2008. The company announced it would launch initial markets for this 4G (fourth-generation cellular technology, offering digital voice plus super-high-speed data) network in late 2007 and expand nationally in 2008. To see where the development stands six months later and determine what it will mean for mobile professionals and consumers, we asked Peter Cannistra, Sprint Nextel’s director of product strategy and partnership development, to look into his crystal ball. PC Today: What are the current dates for rollout of the test and real deployments of the WiMAX network? Peter Cannistra: We are not running test markets. Our first launches are full commercial offerings in two top-10 markets, Chicago and Washington, D.C., by the end of 2007. Our national commercial launch is slated for first or second quarter 2008. Our WiMAX network will cover 100 million users by the end of 2008.
Cannistra: We have made a $3 billion to $4 billion capital commitment for the nationwide footprint. We are substantially using our current infrastructure—our broad network of cell towers from the Sprint-Nextel merger. We’re expending our budget on new base stations and antennas to power the technology. PCT: How will the service work, in terms of functionality? Will the broadband access be an offering only to those with mobile phone plans, or will it be a standalone offering to notebook users? Cannistra: The WiMAX ecosystem is such that it allows for a low-price chipset. That lets us embed a WiMAX chip in many, many devices. We’re talking far more than mobile phones and notebook computers. Expect to see WiMAX chips in consumer electronics devices such as MP3 and video players, gaming and video chat devices, notebooks, ultra-mobile PCs and handhelds, and mobile phones for both data and VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol]. Any product for which you can see a value in broadband wireless information exchange, we will explore its potential for WiMAX. Some of these devices Sprint will market and sell directly with its service. But consumers will also be able to purchase third-party devices and then obtain the service from Sprint. PCT: How will the service impact users financially, in terms of pricing plans? Cannistra: We have released nothing specific on pricing plans yet. However, with that breadth of devices you can expect to see a similar breadth of pricing plans. These will range from subscription-based accounts for notebook users to an ad hoc, pay-by-the-use service where someone wants to hear a particular MP3 file and can download it on the go. The pricing offerings will have mass-market appeal. PCT: How fast do you expect the WiMAX service to be, and how much faster than your existing broadband access? Cannistra: Our goal is that the average user will enjoy 2 to 4Mbps on a consistent basis, which is three to five times faster than most wireless mobile plans offered today. Of course, burst and peak transfer rates can be much higher than that. PCT: How do Motorola, Samsung, and Intel, your announced partners, fit into the scheme? Are Motorola and Samsung designing your handsets? Cannistra: Intel is developing the WiMAX chipset. Motorola and Samsung are providing the majority of the infrastructure hardware—the base stations and antennas. We haven’t announced who will develop the Sprint-branded devices, but we will be making that announcement shortly. [The announcement had not been made at press time but may have occurred by the time you read this.] Given their strengths in technology and research development, Motorola and Samsung will be great candidates as device manufacturers. Samsung, as an example, has a wide range of consumer electronics devices, from audio players to televisions. It’s not a big stretch to imagine they would embed them with a WiMAX chip. Those customers could then access the Sprint network. PCT: What is the reasoning behind Sprint’s decision to be an early adopter of this technology? Cannistra: We see a huge market out there with a big demand for Internet usage. Just look at Google; at MySpace; at the huge explosion of personal content and social networking. We also see a megatrend for mobility. People want to take their applications with them wherever they are. In our business case that justified an investment in wireless broadband, we had very specific requirements that were not technology-dependent. If we are going to invest heavily in 4G, we knew the technology would need quick time to market, have a high performance-to-cost ratio, and must have an ecosystem that would allow for a lot of embedded devices. WiMAX will allow a service that will be three to four times as fast and cost three to four times less (on a per-megabyte basis) than other options. This will be a very high-performance, low-cost network. Additionally, Sprint’s licensed spectrum [2.5GHz] is particularly well-suited to WiMAX. In the top 100 markets in the United States, we cover 85% of the population. With our network in place, we’re talking about the equivalent of a metro-wide, total city-coverage WiFi hotspot. Wherever you are, you will have access to broadband. PCT: Speaking of coverage, are you looking at covering other vertical markets for business users and companies, or is this pretty much a consumer play? Cannistra: We are trying to think out of the box as much as possible. Any device you could pick up and use in a consumer or business setting you could embed with a WiMAX chipset. Real estate; point-of-purchase; medical; insurance—all these are potential applications for this technology. And those examples just scratch the surface of what we can do.  by Jennifer Farwell |
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