'Sprint 4G' roll-out to keep pace with Clearwire's

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'Sprint 4G' roll-out to keep pace with Clearwire's

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 26 March, 2009

READ MORE: Clearwire | Sprint Nextel

As Clearwire gears up for further city launches of its WiMAX-based mobile broadband service, it is poised to add carrier-class VoIP to its mix, increasing the quad play options for its key MVNO partners and investors - Sprint Nextel and three cablecos (Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Brighthouse Networks). And Sprint itself has firmed up further roll-out of its 'Sprint 4G' dual-mode CDMA/WiMAX offering, mirroring Clearwire's territorial expansion.

Sprint, the 51% stakeholder in Clearwire, will offer WiMAX mobile broadband alongside its CDMA services, under an MVNO deal. It said it will launch 'Sprint 4G' this year in Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Portland and Seattle. These will be followed in 2010 by Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC. Unsurprisingly, the build-out map follows Clearwire's own projections, outlined earlier this month when the new company insisted it would stick to its expansion plan despite the tough economy. Its other key investors are Intel and Google, which hope ready availability of open access mobile broadband will boost use of advanced web services, and promote the open web services model in the US.

Sprint also put some details behind the devices it will offer with its dual-mode system. These will include single-mode and multimode datacards, plus embedded notebooks, a small office modem and a trimode handset (also featuring Wi-Fi). It is not clear which vendor will supply the first handsets, though Samsung and HTC must be in the running, since both have multimode WiMAX devices on the market - Samsung's for WiBro/CDMA in Korea, HTC's for GSM/WiMAX in Russia. Given that Google is an investor in Clearwire and a close software partner of Sprint's, it is also likely that an Android device will appear for the network in the near future, which might also favor HTC as an early supplier. To date, Sprint offers one dual-mode device, the U300 USB modem.

Meanwhile, Clearwire has begun its first trials of VoIP handsets. Currently, the firm offers VoIP for $25 a month flat fee, but only for fixed access devices, mainly on its legacy networks. It now plans to support mobile VoIP from next year, which will be particularly important to its three cableco investors/MVNO partners. These have used fixed VoIP aggressively to disrupt AT&T and Verizon, but currently rely on cellular MVNO deals if they want to support mobile voice. Again, Samsung is expected to be a likely supplier of handsets, because of its experience in Korea, where KT was recently cleared to support VoIP on its WiBro system.