Sprint: Baltimore gets commercial WiMAX in Sept.

Speaking at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress in Amsterdam, Sprint Nextel CTO and president of the company's Xohm WiMAX business, said its first commercial WiMAX service will go live in September in Baltimore ahead of its merger with Clearwire. Commercial service in Chicago and Washington, DC will follow in the fourth quarter. The announcement isn't surprising given the fact that these markets were soft launched earlier this year.

West said that more than 575 WiMAX base station sites are operating and a number of devices are moving through its testing labs. "It's the only [communications] technology I know where the chipset evolution for devices is going faster than the infrastructure," he said. West told telecoms.com that the devices available at commercial launch will include a Samsung card, a ZyXEL modem, a ZTE USB dongle and the Nokia N810 Internet tablet along with WiMAX embedded laptops.

Sprint missed its original commercial launch target of April, citing problems provisioning backhaul. West said the problems have now been solved as the company has been successful at securing backhaul capacity through fiber-optic and microwave links.

For more:
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