Sprint Delays WiMax, Vodafone Pushes LTE

The commercial launch of Sprint's Xohm WiMax service ill be delayed until later in 2008; meanwhile, rival Vodafone is extolling carriers to back LTE instead.

At this year’s CTIA trade show, Sprint has confirmed that it is delaying the rollout of its WiMax-based Xohm wireless broadband service until later in 2008. Sprint claims the delay has nothing to do with the WiMax technology itself—which the company already has up and operating in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area and Chicago—but a matter of making sure the commercial launch fully meets customer expectations.

Sprint was due to launch the Xohm service this month; the delay is just the latest in a series of setbacks in Sprint’s plan to roll out WiMax services in the United States, including investors balking at the price tag, an on-again off-again partnership with ClearWire, and the possibility of forming a new company with investors like Intel and cable companies to shoulder some of the financial burden of deploying WiMax. WiMax enabled devices are just starting to become available to consumers—like the WiMax-enabled Nokia N810 and Everex CloudBook Max this week—but without a functional network, they’re sure to be a tough sell, and the delay certainly weakens WiMax’s position in the wireless broadband market.

At the same time, Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin is urging the wireless industry to forget about WiMax and adopt the fourth-generation technology Long-Term Evolution (LTE) as a high-speed wireless standard. During his keynote address at CTIA, Sarin minced no words, saying the industry must "look at LTE as an all-encompassing standard," and said Vodafone and Verizon (in which Vodafone holds a 45 percent stake) will eventually migrate to LTE from HSPDA and EV-DO technologies, respectively.

WiMax enjoys major backing from Intel, and is already being deployed in South Korea, the UK, Canada, and Russia, in addition to Sprint’s planned U.S. rollout. Conversely, LTE is an evolution of existing mobile data technologies and hasn’t been rolled out in any markets, although some industry watchers expect that LTE will be eventually supported by the majority of the world’s mobile carriers.