By | No Comments
Last updated: Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Italian Job, a Hollywood action flick starring Charlize Theron, is streaming live to a laptop computer. Speed: about 3 megabits a second. What makes this demonstration so unusual is that the movie is streaming in triplicate to a laptop in a Sprint minivan that’s tearing around downtown Baltimore. “That’s better than most people can get at home,” says Sprint technician Lee Mellon, pointing to the trio of Hollywood-perfect video streams. “WiMax rocks.” The question is: Will anybody care? Sprint is about to find out. Baltimore recently became the first city in the USA to go live with WiMax. Short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, WiMax is a fourth-generation (4G) wireless technology that can turn whole cities into one big hot spot. Sprint has an even grander vision: It wants to turn the entire USA into a mobile surfing zone. The mobile data network is designed to cater to the needs of mobile laptop users, not cellphone users, for a fee. Because the speeds are so fast — 10 megabits or better, potentially — it could easily be used as a replacement for DSL or cable modem service in the home and office. Sprint has been deploying WiMax here for months on the theory that once people get a taste for its speed, they won’t want to go back to conventional mobile networks. Sprint’s partner in this massive undertaking is Clearwire, a small Seattle-based carrier that has long extolled the virtues of WiMax. The warm embrace is owed, in part, to the vision of its chairman, cellular pioneer Craig McCaw. Sprint and Clearwire are merging WiMax assets to create a new company dedicated to the 4G technology. (The new company will also be called Clearwire.) Financial backers include Google, Intel and Comcast. Ben Wolff, CEO of Clearwire — he’ll also head the combined company — says WiMax is…

Originally posted here:
Mobile Broadband Hits the Air

CommentSubscribe