Sprint Nextel Corp. has chosen the Chicago and Washington, D.C., metro areas for the first deployment of its WiMAX network, with a rollout that it expected to cover at least 100 million people by the end of 2008.
The initial WiMAX markets are supposed to be online by the end of this year; additional markets will be selected based on market-readiness estimates, the carrier said. Sprint Nextel also is building out its CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A network, and surpassed its goal of covering 40 million potential customers by the end of 2006; its Rev A coverage reaches more than 60 million pops.
Nokia Corp. will provide the network equipment for the WiMAX network, and Motorola Inc. will be developing chip sets for devices. According to Sprint Nextel, Samsung Corp. will develop chip sets and has also committed to producing half a dozen WiMAX-capable devices, including “ultra mobile” PCs and personal media players. LG Electronics Co. Ltd. intends to develop “an infotainment device that would work on the Sprint Nextel WiMAX network.” Intel Corp. has already completed the design of a single-chip, multi-band WiMAX/Wi-Fi chipset that the company says it will “sample in card and module forms in late 2007.”
The WiMAX network technology and future applications are being demonstrated this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Sprint Nextel details WiMAX strategy
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