Sprint Nextel Corp. remains committed to its WiMAX plans and continues to move forward with its soft launch of services in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. ,later this year, according to Sprint Nextel Xohm public-relations spokesman John Polivka.
“We don’t expect any impact to the broad WiMAX ecosystem,” Polivka said in an e-mail to RCR Wireless News.
“We still have the involvement and support of our tier-one ecosystem,” Polivka said. “Agreements are in place with Intel for chipsets; Samsung, Motorola and Nokia for infrastructure; and with Samsung, Nokia, ZTE and ZyXel for various access devices. While not part of the main ecosystem, LG has committed to a WiMAX device for 2007 and Intel has signed five PC original equipment manufacturers to embed laptops with WiMAX chipsets in 2008.”
“Details of those customer agreements are proprietary,” Polivka said.
Sprint Nextel and Clearwire found “more complexity than we were comfortable with,” Polivka said, in attempting to merge “two different business models.” The two parties’ letter of intent could not be executed for the benefit of a “simplified user experience.” The two companies continue to talk about roaming agreements and spectrum/frequency management issues, he said.
Sprint Nextel has 10,000 cell sites ready to go and thousands of base stations on order, according to the spokesman.
According to Polivka, Sprint Nextel also recently signed memos of understanding with Korea Telecom and the government of Taiwan on roaming, interoperability and ecosystem expansion for economies of scale to make WiMAX pervasive. Plus, the International Telecommunication Union has certified WiMAX for global standardization.
“Needless to say, the momentum continues,” Polivka concluded.
Sprint Nextel stands behind WiMAX plans
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