Sprint Running Out Clock on Operational Involvement with WiMAX

Implications: 1.      Sprint already knows the answers to “how people will use the [WiMAX] network.” 2.      It really does not need any “more insight into ‘data usage’ and traffic trends.” 3.      It has plenty of data from its EVDO Rev A experience to adequately project that the current lack of applications will hardly be sufficient for all of that bandwidth.  

Analysis:  If there were new applications generated with higher rate wireless services with EVDO Rev A, Sprint would probably be touting plans to go to the next revisions.  “The sudden ascension of Baltimore to leader of the WiMAX pack,” as pointed out in the initial Unstrung article on this announcement, is revealing.  Originally, Sprint talked about the Baltimore-Washington corridor as a whole.   And if anything, Washington itself was viewed as more favorable because of it being close to its North Virginia office as well as the attractiveness of potential government customers.  Although Baltimore is an NFL city, the first commercial deployment will garner less attention than it would in Washington or in Chicago.  

No time frames are given for when Sprint expects to finish its data gathering from its “ideal ‘model’” (potentially portending a less than aggressive roll-out) and no dates are provided for the next two cities.   As the service provider apparently meanders in Baltimore, it will be killing time until operational control can be handed over to Clearwire.   

Sprint has certainly come a long way from the initial rhetoric of covering a minimum of 100 million people with WiMAX by the end of 2008.