Report: Sprint to go with WiMAX

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Sprint is set to announce its intention to build a $1 billion to $4 billion WiMAX network, a major undertaking for the carrier. The announcement would be a boon to WiMAX proponents like Intel and Motorola and a clear setback for Qualcomm with its competing technology. Analysts say the deployment could spell trouble for the company's stock, since a similar billion dollar deployment of fiber by Verizon dogged the company on Wall Street for months.

As we wrote yesterday, Sprint needs to get back to the fundamentals [1] and, in particular build out its network, so the move is timely. The choice of WiMAX, of course, is somewhat controversial since a deployment of this size has not yet been attempted. Sprint recently announced an expanded deal with Time Warner [2] to take its VoIP offering across Sprint's current IP network and a massive WiMAX deployment could make that a wVoIP play in the years ahead. Sprint's overall bet is that wireless Internet and mobile content services will be a big play in the future, and while wVoIP seems like a no-brainer, the uptake of mobile content services has been slow.

For more on Sprint's rumored WiMAX announcement:
- see this article [3] from the WSJ (sub. req.)