WiMax gets a start with Sprint and Samsung
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Sprint and Samsung Electronics Corporation Ltd. announced on 05/15 that a new broadband wireless network offering the speed and mobility of WiMAX has met Sprint’s rigorous commercial acceptance criteria including overall performance, handoff performance and handoff delay. This key technical milestone has been passed after extensive evaluation both in the XOHM™ lab environment and with the commercial service network being built in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area. Sprint plans on launching commercial WiMAX service in those cities later this year.
Samsung has been working with Sprint in the United States to test and build Sprint’s XOHM mobile broadband Internet service compliant to the mobile WiMAX standard.
“This is a major step towards launch readiness and Sprint is extremely pleased with the performance of the mobile WiMAX network and access devices from Samsung,” said Barry West, XOHM president. “The collaboration with Samsung and our other partners has created a WiMAX ecosystem that has now proven that it can deliver this new technology to the marketplace well ahead of any feasible alternative.”
Last month, Samsung announced the introduction of several WiMAX-enabled devices. The Express Card (E100 PC Card) and WiMAX embedded UMPC (Q1 Ultra Premium Mobile PC). With the technology proven to be ready, the Samsung mobile WiMAX systems being deployed for Sprint in Baltimore and Washington D.C. support the commercial introduction of XOHM service anticipated to begin later this year.
The XOHM business unit within Sprint specifically focuses on developing the WiMAX ecosystem and standards to bring the latest broadband wireless technology to the U.S. marketplace. Sprint is utilizing the significant spectrum holdings at 2.5 GHz that were combined in the Sprint Nextel merger to deploy mobile WiMAX technology from Samsung and other vendors.
