 High-speed, long-distance wireless launches in 3 cities ·Jan 21, 10:25 AM From NewsFactor.com: “The trademark ‘SprintSpeed’ could take on a whole new meaning in 2008, as the telecommunications firm moves ahead with plans to deploy its long-awaited WiMAX service, known commercially as Xohm. “[Recently,] the company announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that a “The show in Las Vegas was a busy time for Sprint. In addition to the soft launch, the company has announced a number of new Xohm agreements** for portal services and WiMAX devices… “The promise of WiMAX technology is remarkable: data transmission speeds as fast as 70 Mbps over distances as great as 50 kilometers. Transmission speeds do drop over distance, however, and it is a shared-bandwidth technology, “Preliminary estimates also suggest that WiMAX will also offer cost savings to consumers. High-speed cellular data services currently cost approximately $60 per month. Sprint reportedly is hoping to offer the Xohm mobile Internet service for between $30 and $40 per month… “Sprint was one of a number of vendors at CES with big WiMAX plans. For its part, Sprint said that the “Other CES vendors with WiMAX-related announcements: San Francisco’s OQO (an ultra-mobile PC planned for 2008); AsusTek of Taiwan (a variety of WiMAX-embedded devices); and Zyxel (collaborating with Sequans on WiMAX access devices for Xohm’s commercial launch).” Read the entire article at NewsFactor.com. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
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soft launch of the service to Xohm employees in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., is now under way.
so actual mileage may vary. A more common metric for the service is 10 Mbps over 10 kilometers. Nonetheless, WiMAX offers the potential for significantly faster and far-reaching wireless Internet than cellular data transmissions or the more well-known WiFi.
Xohm service will be commercially available in select cities around the United States in the second quarter of 2008. The company hopes for a large-scale rollout of its Xohm WiMAX service by the end of the year.
