Sprint Promises a WiMAX Phone... Eventually

Sprint has committed to releasing a phone with the 4G cellular-wireless technology WiMax, but it's being more than a bit vague about when.

This carrier says its product roadmap for 2009 and 2010 contains a tri-mode phone -- a device with CDMA, EV-DO, and WiMAX. It didn't give any additional details on this model, but it's almost certainly going to be a high-end phone aimed at business users.

Sprint is putting more emphasis on bringing 4G service to notebooks than it is on phones. It has already released a USB modem, and has plans to offer laptops with built-in WiMAX and a small-office-home-office broadband modem too.

Sprint's WiMAX Roll-Out Plans
It's arguable that there's no tremendous hurry for this carrier to offer a WiMax-enabled phone, as Sprint currently only offers this service in one place: Baltimore. Still, it plans to add several new cities by the end of this year:

Sprint also expects to launch 4G service in more markets in 2010, including Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

This WiMAX service is significantly faster than Sprint's competitor's 3G mobile broadband offerings. It sports peak downlink speeds of up to 12 Mbps, and average downlink speeds of 2-4 Mbps.

"Sprint continues to lead the wireless industry by harnessing the power of WiMAX" said Todd Rowley, vice president of Sprint 4G. "The availability of Sprint 4G in more places this year and our aggressive expansion of Sprint 4G service demonstrates our commitment to provide 4G capabilities and devices nationwide for our business, consumer and government customers."

Source: Sprint