Sprint to soft-launch WiMAX before Christmas
Within the week, Sprint will turn live its WiMAX networks in Chicago and Baltimore-Washington, D.C., Sprint officials said today. The soft launch will extend only to Sprint employees and is intended to prepare the networks for a broader customer trial in the first quarter.
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands six months after Sprint began publicly reviewing its WiMAX commitment — the June 2007 strategic review reported by the Wall Street Journal — and weeks after the "in a few days" soft-launch report from Phone Scoop made good on its promise. The employee-only activation in Chicago and Baltimore-Washington is the first tangible proof that the program survived that review.
It matters because of what did not happen first: Sprint and Clearwire terminated their joint agreement in November 2007, the deal that was meant to bring WiMAX coverage to 100 million people, leaving Sprint to carry the buildout alone. A solo soft launch before Christmas is therefore as much a statement about financing and resolve as about radio engineering.
First-order effects
- Sprint employees in Chicago and Baltimore-Washington get live XOHM service this week, giving the carrier real-world usage data to debug the two networks ahead of a broader customer trial slated for Q1 2008.
- With the Clearwire partnership terminated, Sprint now owns the entire capital burden and execution risk for these first markets — no partner shares either the cost or the blame if the launch slips.
Second-order effects
- The failed Clearwire deal leaves both companies sizing each other up as rivals rather than partners in early 4G coverage, forcing each to justify standalone economics against the other's footprint claims.
- Rumored talks between Sprint and Google about its mobile efforts put an internet-scale partner back in play for the commercial phase, since an employee-only launch does nothing to solve the device-and-content problem a Q1 customer trial will expose.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 4G becomes the test of whether any single US carrier can fund a next-generation network without a joint venture — pushing the industry toward renewed consolidation or partnership structures around WiMAX spectrum and buildout.
- Employee-only soft launches as a public milestone normalize a new disclosure rhythm for network launches, letting carriers manage expectations city-by-city rather than betting on national availability dates.
The trend: US mobile broadband is crossing from 3G marketing into 4G infrastructure bets, with Sprint's solo WiMAX push the first large carrier test of go-it-alone versus partnership economics.