4G — the next generation in wireless networks — is coming from Sprint, and it promises to be 4X faster than the current wireless technology, capable of providing interactive TV and gaming services, airborne Internet at speeds available on computers at home and entire metro areas being transformed into "hot spots."
Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 wireless carrier, Tuesday announced plans for a jazzed-up 4G — fourth generation — wireless network, using technology from Schaumburg-based Motorola and other industry leaders, that's expected to dramatically change how people use cell phones, laptops and other devices.
Among the applications coming in tests at the end of 2007 and commercially in 2008 using WiMax technology with Sprint and its partners, Motorola, Samsung Electronics in South Korea and Intel, could be:
"None of us today can envision our lives without wireless connectivity or the Internet," said Gary Forsee, president and chief executive officer of Reston, Va.-based Sprint Nextel. "Sprint Nextel is taking a major step forward by linking the incredible potential of these two cornerstones of daily communications. We'll give customers the power to harness business information and personal entertainment easily and inexpensively—and in ways that they will one day wonder how they lived without."
Sprint is investing up to $3 billion in the new network in 2007 and 2008.
John Slack, an analyst with Morningstar Inc., the Chicago equity analysis firm, saidSprint's 4G plans are ambitious.
"It remains to be seen how quickly they can get their 4G network up and running, particularly when they have struggled with the integration of the Sprint and Nextel networks thus far," he said. "Motorola has staked the future of their infrastructure business on 4G — or Wi4 as they've been calling it — and this contract win should benefit not only their networks business, but also their handset business down the road as mobile devices are needed for the new network."
Gary Koerper, Motorola vice president of advanced technology product management and business development, who heads up Motorola's WiMax efforts, said 4G will be four times faster than the fastest broadband services available from wireless companies now, reaching speeds of 2 megabits per second to 4 megabitsper second.
He said WiMax will make data services available at a lower cost than is possible now, which could open up the market.
"One of the worst secrets is that 3G [the current technology generation] is too expensive to support Video on Demand. It doesn't make money [for carriers], though it's a great marketing tool," he said.
Bill Reinisch, Motorola vice president of corporate strategy and new initiatives, said "hot spots" using Wi-Fi technology to hook up to the Internet have caught on with consumers because they provide high-speed links at convenient locations, such as Starbuck's. He said Sprint's 4G network in essence makes the entire coverage area into a hot spot, offering high-speed services without the rigmarole Wi-Fi users go through to connect to the Internet.
WiMax offers broad coverage in metro areas, but also promises affordable coverage in rural areas.
Motorola said the company will provide Sprint with help with its 4G infrastructure, handsets and TV applications in the home as part of the company's "seamless mobility" strategy. Intel is developing computer chips for 4G, and Samsung will be providing phones and infrastructure.
Specific financial arrangements were not disclosed.
Over the last two decades, wireless service has evolved from 1G, which was analog phone service, to 2G and 3G, which had increasingly speedy data services.
A couple of other technologies have been competing to become the standard for 4G. Sprint's move would seem to give give the upper hand to WiMax, heavily promoted by Intel and Motorola.
Philip Solis, a senior analyst at ABI Research, said, "Many market observers have been skeptical about the prospects for mobile WiMax to be deployed across a developed country such as the United States, given all the wired and cellular networks that exist.
". . . From a worldwide perspective, ABI Research believes, these recent WiMax-related events mean that the United States will be part of a growing mobile WiMax global roaming belt."
WiMax has been adopted commercially in Korea and soon will be tested by Softbank in Japan. Motorola also expects Sprint's decision to influence and drive further adoption of WiMax by other providers worldwide.
Koerper said a small service in this country, Clearwire, has adopted the technology, but Sprint's move could be "the tipping point for the technology."
Shares of Sprint fell 31 cents a share, or 1.8 percent, to close at a new 52-week low of $16.63.
source: http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-sprint09.html 9aug2006
The backers of so-called Net neutrality have lost nearly every battle in Congress so far, although they plan to take another tilt at that windmill when lawmakers return from recess in September.
Out in the real world, however, things are not proceeding according to script, at least for those who insist that what the Internet really needs is a brand-new layer of government regulation. Yesterday, Sprint announced plans to spend as much as $3 billion building a nationwide WiMax network that would provide high-speed Internet access to 100 million consumers by 2008, according to Sprint's estimate.
What does this have to do with Net neutrality? Well, WiMax is one of several emerging technologies that stand to reshape the Internet-service industry in the coming years. Those who argue that the government should enforce some politician's idea of "neutrality" on Internet service claim that the phone and cable companies enjoy a comfy duopoly on providing Internet access to consumers. According to this reasoning, these companies need to be regulated so they don't abuse their market position by trying to erect "tolls" on the information superhighway.
High-speed wireless Internet access, however, means no more duopoly. And WiMax is not the only contender. Starting today, the Federal Communications Commission is auctioning a big swath of wireless spectrum for cell-phone providers. The auction is overdue and beset by market-distorting preferences for certain bidders, but with luck the result will be a lot more wireless bandwidth to go around.
WiMax, meanwhile, operates in unlicensed spectrum, meaning Sprint doesn't have to shell out money in auctions to deploy the technology. WiMax is like a wireless home network or a hot-spot in a coffee-shop, but it works over much longer distances, allowing greater coverage and a wider variety of uses. WiMax is still unproven in a roll-out of this size, but the fact that Sprint is spending billions to give it a go is testimony to the dynamism of the high-speed Internet market.
A decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that the old-fashioned copper-wire phone network was an "essential facility." That is, it was unique, valuable and couldn't be replicated, so competition with the Baby Bells was impossible unless the "last mile" to homes was opened up to competitors to use. Today we have cable companies offering phone service and more and more cell-phone subscribers every day.
A similar thing is happening in the high-speed Internet space. Those who want to regulate broadband providers are saying that the phone and cable networks are too valuable and too hard to replicate for anyone to break up the duopoly. We guess Sprint didn't get the memo. If Congress should for some reason lose its cool and give in to the MoveOn.org crowd pushing for greater Internet regulation, it will likely come just in time for its backers, once again, to be proven wrong about the absence of competition in telecom.
p.A10
source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115508153993630488.html?mod=googlenews_wsj 9aug2006
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