Sprint plans to invest more than $7 billion in 2007 to enhance its networks, upgrade to EV-DO Rev. A and develop its WiMAX deployment for mobile broadband coverage.
Besides upgrading its Nextel National and Sprint National networks, the operator has earmarked up to $800 million for deploying its mobile WiMAX technology, saying it will launch in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, DC, by year’s end. Next year, the operator has indicated it will expand the capital expenditure for WiMAX to $1.5 to $2 billion. Using its 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings which cover 85% of the households in the top 100 U.S. markets, Sprint says it will commercially launch the service nationwide by the end of 2008. The operator has already signed on with Motorola, Nokia and Samsung as its network infrastructure partners.
For its Sprint and Nextel National networks, the operator also has indicated it will add “several thousand cell sites” to improve coverage.
By year’s end, the company says it will have spent $1.4 billion over the last two years on its wireline network. Sprint’s Tier 1 Global IP network is a next-generation platform that enables wireline-wireless integration for both the consumer and enterprise segments. The wireline backbone plays a role in many Sprint initiatives, including wireless traffic backhaul and its cable VoIP business.
ts wireline network. Sprint’s Tier 1 Global IP network is a next-generation platform that enables wireline-wireless integration for both the consumer and enterprise segments. The wireline backbone plays a role in many Sprint initiatives, including wireless traffic backhaul and its cable VoIP business.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Sprint has continued its aggressive plans to enhance its networks enabling innovative products and services to be delivered to customers. Sprint expects to invest more than USD 7 billion in 2007 to enhance its networks and meet the demand for extensive mobile broadband coverage. This year, Sprint expects to upgrade a majority of the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network to faster Evolution - Data Optimized Revision A (EV-DO Rev. A). It will also begin to deploy its next generation broadband wireless network based on WiMAX technology and continue to enhance the Nextel National and Sprint National networks. And, during 2006 and 2007, Sprint expects to have invested approximately USD 1.4 billion in its wireline network. Sprint plans to invest up to USD 800 million in 2007 and betweenUSD 1.5 billion and USD 2 billion in 2008 in deploying a nation-wide WiMAX network. Sprint will use its extensive 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings that cover 85 percent of the households in the top 100 U.S. markets to deliver WiMAX to initial markets (Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC) late this year and commercially launch the service in the second quarter of next year, providing service coverage to as many as 100 million people by the end of 2008.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Mobile operators have barely rolled out their new third-generation wireless networks, and they’re already talking about the fourth generation. As next-generation cellular technologies — including those of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) project, whose mission is to guide the evolution of GSM cellular networks — have trouble getting off the ground, the industry has been turning its attention toward the WiMax packet-based technology.
“If the 3GSM show is any indication, then I think we will be hearing a lot about WiMax at CTIA,” said Mohammad Shakouri, vice president of marketing for the WiMax Forum, referring to the 3GSM World Congress trade show held in February in Barcelona. “The technology is getting close to commercialisation, and there has been a lot of buzz the past several months.”
WiMax, which is similar to another packet-based wireless technology, Wi-Fi, already has the foundation for a strong ecosystem thanks to support from handset and infrastructure makers including Motorola, Samsung and Nokia, as well as from chipmaker Intel.
These companies are all expected to have WiMax products in the market sometime this year, and some will be shown off at CTIA. Samsung, for example, is expected to have on hand some of its already-announced WiMax-ready gear, including a handset, ultra-mobile PC and a new USB dongle that offers wireless broadband for laptops.
The WiMax Forum, the industry group that promotes the technology, has almost completed the necessary certification requirements for new products, another major step that could help push deployment. According to Shakouri, products using the 2.3GHz spectrum, which is used primarily in South Korea, will be certified by mid-year. Products using the 3.5GHz will be certified in the third quarter, and products using the 2.5GHz spectrum, which is used mostly in the US, will have certification available by the end of the year.
WiMax, whose transmission distances range from a few hundred feet in densely populated areas to more than a mile in suburban areas, can support peak data speeds of 20 megabits per second, although average-user data rates fall between 2Mbps and 8Mbps. Data rates for the next-stage 3G cellular service — sometimes called 3.5G — are about 3Mbps.
1.Asian markets lead the way
Momentum among carriers is already building. In Japan more WiMax-compatible spectrum will be allocated by the government later this year. Korea Telecom in South Korea is already committed to launching its WiMax service this year. There are also plans to launch WiMax services in India, Malaysia and Pakistan, as well as in parts of Eastern Europe, Shakouri said. And the government in Taiwan is spending $1bn (£510m) to encourage the manufacture and development of 2.5GHz WiMax products and applications.
In the US, Sprint, the number-three carrier, has already said it plans to spend $3bn in the next two years to build a WiMax network, which is expected to be able to provide service to 100 million people by the end of 2008. Sprint is using its existing 2.5GHz spectrum, half of which it acquired from its merger with Nextel, to deliver the new service.
On Monday, Sprint announced several new cities that will be part of the WiMax network, It also named which of its named infrastructure partners would be developing which markets. Motorola will be developing Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis, and Grand Rapids, Mich. Samsung will develop Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Providence, R.I. And Nokia will develop Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
Sprint had previously announced that Chicago and Baltimore/Washington DC would be the first two markets to get the service, by the end of 2007. And Nokia had also previously named it would develop four markets, in Texas, for deployment in early 2008: Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio.
Currently, the only other operator in the US using WiMax is a start-up called Clearwire, which was founded by mobile-industry billionaire Craig McCaw. Today it delivers WiMax broadband services to fixed locations, but eventually the company will offer mobile service as well. Clearwire, which raised $900m in venture backing this summer, went public earlier this month.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Gerald Santucci, head of the European Commission unit whose domain includes RFID issues, said he feared that rushing to place restrictions on industries hoping to use the technology would choke its potentially valuable application in health care, business, transportation and other realms.
But if regulators deem that widespread RFID use is insufficiently safe, secure and privacy-preserving, then “Mrs. Reding will have no other option but to trigger legislation,” Santucci told participants at a luncheon discussion in Washington, DC organised by the law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge.
He was referring to a recent announcement by commissioner Viviane Reding, whose group focuses on “information society and media”. She said that instead of issuing regulations, the commission plans to develop a set of guidelines — a “soft law”, by Santucci’s characterisation — by year’s end to lay out its expectations on issues like privacy and security. To get there, it plans to consult over the next several months with a to-be-named group of 25 to 30 people representing all facets of the RFID debate. (The European Commission is the European Union’s executive arm and is composed of 27 commissioners, one from each member nation.)
By the close of 2008, the commission plans to reevaluate whether legislation is necessary. It’s unclear how restrictive any potential rules would be.
That option is preferable for now because it typically takes as many as three years for new laws to gain final passage at the commission, and by then, RFID-specific rules may already be out of date, Santucci said. He indicated that even if the commission does decide it needs to enact new laws, they would cover more than just RFID.
Advocates of RFID, which broadcasts a unique ID through radio frequencies, argue that the technology affords myriad benefits, such as adding precision to medical operating rooms, allowing retailers to track inventory more closely, and helping doctors to monitor elderly or other homebound patients from afar.
But RFID,the idea of unfettered use has attracted a fair amount of outcry from privacy groups concerned about the potential for secret tracking, unauthorised collection of information and other abuses. Those fears have prompted a number of state legislatures to propose laws aimed at restricting, or in some cases outlawing, RFID use. (Some politicians in the US, by contrast, formed a working group last year focused on exploring how the tiny chips might improve their constituents’ quality of life.)
That sentiment is no different in Europe. More than two-thirds of the people who expressed their views to the commission during a recent public comment period on RFID said they had strong convictions against the chips’ use, Santucci said.
Santucci attributed what he called a “problem of trust” to a lack of understanding about how the technology works. He suggested that governments and industry worldwide should build privacy protections into their RFID use, but they also must present a unified message about “why RFID is something that can add a lot to improve (citizens’) quality of life”.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Sprint Allocates $7 Billion for Upgrades
