Sprint's WiMAX Effort to Focus on Devices
by Jim Barthold
Even as Sprint wrings out the first shipment of Samsung mobile WiMAX equipment in its labs in anticipation of a December soft rollout, the carrier is already determining what expects to reap from mobile broadband via a new wireless network.
From the start, it won’t be anything like a conventional mobile offering that can be purchased in a Sprint store as part of a contract, said Barry West, president of 4G mobile broadband and CTO at Sprint.
“We’re working hard to get out of the subsidy business,” West said. “We are driving the ecosystem of chipset vendors and consumer electronics companies and device manufacturers to get to the point where WiMAX is embedded in devices like Wi- Fi is today and the carriers do not pay a subsidy for that device.”
That may not, of course, be the model when Sprint begins soft rollouts in December in Washington, D.C. using Samsung equipment and Chicago using Motorola gear. It may not even be the model when the carrier actually launches in those two markets—and probably a few others—in the April time frame next year. But it will be the way Sprint markets its mobile broadband data service, West said.
“We’re looking at having optimized devices,” he said, using the example of a cordless phone which is an optimized telephone for within a residence. “We could have the ultimate coreless phone that works in your town. It becomes much more a world where any device provides an access route to the Internet.”
Today’s mobile wireless devices have become jacks-of-all- trades with cameras and music players and Internet connections and even the ability to make phone calls. The mobile WiMAX IP foundation lets a carrier move away from the notion of selling a package of services and the device to run those services to selling services and letting the consumer purchase the appropriate device.
“It takes a while for people to get used to the fact that we’re not going to look for a contract per device,” he said. “It will be a world where any device provides an access route to the Internet, whereas today that doesn’t exist.”
This, of course, is all in the future. Sprint’s job now—in addition to testing the capabilities of its mobile WiMAX vendors Samsung, Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks and building out the initial networks—is “explaining the difference between mobilizing the Internet and a mobile voice network. We’re not ready yet to come out with our plans. We’ll do that much nearer to launch date,” he said.
Even as Sprint wrings out the first shipment of Samsung mobile WiMAX equipment in its labs in anticipation of a December soft rollout, the carrier is already determining what expects to reap from mobile broadband via a new wireless network.
From the start, it won’t be anything like a conventional mobile offering that can be purchased in a Sprint store as part of a contract, said Barry West, president of 4G mobile broadband and CTO at Sprint.
“We’re working hard to get out of the subsidy business,” West said. “We are driving the ecosystem of chipset vendors and consumer electronics companies and device manufacturers to get to the point where WiMAX is embedded in devices like Wi- Fi is today and the carriers do not pay a subsidy for that device.”
That may not, of course, be the model when Sprint begins soft rollouts in December in Washington, D.C. using Samsung equipment and Chicago using Motorola gear. It may not even be the model when the carrier actually launches in those two markets—and probably a few others—in the April time frame next year. But it will be the way Sprint markets its mobile broadband data service, West said.
“We’re looking at having optimized devices,” he said, using the example of a cordless phone which is an optimized telephone for within a residence. “We could have the ultimate coreless phone that works in your town. It becomes much more a world where any device provides an access route to the Internet.”
Today’s mobile wireless devices have become jacks-of-all- trades with cameras and music players and Internet connections and even the ability to make phone calls. The mobile WiMAX IP foundation lets a carrier move away from the notion of selling a package of services and the device to run those services to selling services and letting the consumer purchase the appropriate device.
“It takes a while for people to get used to the fact that we’re not going to look for a contract per device,” he said. “It will be a world where any device provides an access route to the Internet, whereas today that doesn’t exist.”
This, of course, is all in the future. Sprint’s job now—in addition to testing the capabilities of its mobile WiMAX vendors Samsung, Motorola and Nokia Siemens Networks and building out the initial networks—is “explaining the difference between mobilizing the Internet and a mobile voice network. We’re not ready yet to come out with our plans. We’ll do that much nearer to launch date,” he said.
posted by John Baush at
1:04 AM
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