Samsung and Sprint to Bring WiMax to NYC

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Samsung to Manfucture Infrastructure and Endpoint Equipment

Sprint is getting serious about WiMax. With deployments already starting in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and Providence, R.I., Sprint and Samsung have teamed up again to bring WiMax service to the big apple. According to a press release, Samsung will be the primary manufacturer and installer of radio access equipment and supply chipsets and mobile devices. According to Sprint, mobile Internet services will be available for New York area customers in late 2008. While some believe this to be an aggressive goal for the company given their woes with the Nextel acquisition, I know they are aggressively starting to build out their retail and indirect sales channels as a colleague of mine has recently accepted a post with Sprint for the Xohm roll-out.

Published reports have Sprint Nextel investing $1 billion in 2007 and between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in 2008 relating to the 4G mobile broadband network. The WiMAX technology to be deployed in the network is expected to offer a cost-per-megabit and performance advantage that reflects a substantial improvement in the comparable costs for the current 3G mobile broadband offerings.