Sprint Nextel has just managed to squeeze into its timeline of a September go-live date for its Xohm WiMAX-based service, with the first market, Baltimore, offering service to some early users a week ahead of the official launch next Wednesday.
Like most telecoms launches that are later seen as significant milestones in the industry as a whole, Baltimore is a game changer with very modest beginnings. It is offering DSL-class fixed or mobile broadband services on a month-by-month, not contract basis, with speeds and prices that are faster than many of the emerging HSPA or EV-DO offerings from other cellcos. It is available in Maryland’s largest city and the surrounding county, via, initially, just two devices, a $60 Samsung laptop aircard and an $80 ZyXel USB modem. More famous early WiMAX devices, the Nokia internet tablet and the Intel WiMAX/Wi-Fi Centrino for embedded laptop wireless, should follow soon.
So on day one, Baltimore Xohm looks interesting but hardly exciting, with a range similar to a Wi-Fi metrozone’s and services here the headline bandwidth is similar to those offered by Verizon and AT&T (though without the data contracts). It is not the first WiMAX mobile broadband network ‘ KT takes that accolade in Seoul, admittedly with pre-standard equipment ‘ nor the largest 802.16 build-out, a hotly contested honor probably currently held by Wateen in Pakistan and soon to be grabbed by one of the Indian majors.
But of course, the significance of the first live Xohm network is not in its first day offerings but the way that it points to a new way of delivering telecoms, broadband and media services ‘ an open mobile internet model that all carriers, old and new, will have to embrace to some extent, and for which Sprint has a network expressly designed and optimized for the task. As such, it will showcase the way that the mobile internet can work commercially and in terms of real user services ‘ and highlight the pitfalls too. It should, especially once it merges with Clearwire, create a decent new business for Sprint, hastening the abandonment of fixed lines and supporting a new breed of applications and methods of working, including in the M2M (machine to machine) world. It will certainly move the goalposts and hasten the already ongoing trend towards open access and open web services, and provoke a response from the larger cellcos even before they have new all-IP networks to underpin their efforts.
Other Xohm markets will follow later this year and early in 2009, led by Boston, Chicago, Dallas Fort-Worth, Providence, Philadelphia and Washington DC. Service plans for Xohm, which do not require a long term contract, include a $10 day pass, a $25 monthly home internet service and a $30 monthly mobile service, with rates of 2Mbps-4Mbps. More details of the devices and services plans will be announced at the official launch next week.
The importance of Baltimore and Xohm rests on three elements. All of these are key features of the move towards open access and a converged telecoms and media experience that rests on web services. Xohm will not be alone for long, but it is blazing a trail and as such is significant.
First, with a truly broadband IP network, fixed/mobile convergence over a wireless network only becomes fully practical, hastening the replacement of wireline and freeing up the broadband connection. In Sprint’s case, of course, there is no local landline business to protect and it is free, as new entrants like its future spouse Clearwire will be, to push this trend forward and reap the early rewards.
Second, the first devices may be the trusty laptop dongles, but the open nature of the WiMAX network and the efforts of Sprint and its partners to create an ecosystem will boost one of the keys to WiMAX success ‘ a range of access devices that are not just recognizable handset formats, but span new ways to connect to the internet and each other, driving new usage patterns. Open access (allowing any safe device to get on the network) is fundamental to this, and will be promoted aggressively by parties like Google; and less publicly by the M2M (machine to machine) community, which is seeking networks that make this burgeoning activity technically and commercially viable on a grand scale.
Third, a new and cost effective network – with no legacy services to maintain and none of the compromises that come from shoehorning circuit switched platforms into open IP models ‘ can support a new breed of mobile internet services profitably. Sprint has been an early cheerleader for the fundamentals of the mobile web vision ‘ open access, flat rate tariffs, unfettered roaming, freedom to go beyond a carrier’s portal. But so have many other companies, large and small ‘ the difference is that Sprint now has a network on which to demonstrate that this vision actually works in reality, and is actually usable and attractive to consumers and businesses.
As one of the first tier one carriers openly and wholeheartedly to promote the open access, open internet model on mobile networks, Sprint Nextel was always going to be seen as a key ally by Google. While Google happily works with more conventional cellcos that will carry its applications, its key aim is to promote networks that put the power into the hands of the internet services players and encourage broader uptake of web services in general.
Even before it became an investor in the soon-to-be-created ‘new Clearwire’, Google was working closely with Sprint on user interfaces and other software elements to enhance the Xohm experience. This work presumably dovetails with the Android platform and so it will come as no surprise that Android-based WiMAX devices are expected in the market at an early stage. Android is one of Google’s tools for pushing forward its open access vision ‘ although, of course, the first carrier of an Android handset is traditional cellco T-Mobile, complete with contracts, exclusives, subsidies and the other tricks of the closed operator trade. It will be keen to see Android-based products take a starring role on a new network that supports its wider internet objectives so well.
A research note issued last week by ThinkPanmure suggests that Android WiMAX devices will appear in mid-2009 for the Clearwire network (which by then will have been created from the merger of the current Clearwire and Xohm). Android devices would give Clearwire a distinctive device offering to set it apart from other carriers, and Google, as an investor, will be keen to ensure that there are some Android WiMAX products that are a cut above the cellular versions.
These may not be traditional handsets, given that Ben Wolff, head of the current Clearwire, said at the recent CTIA Wireless event that he was not expecting mobile VoIP to be deployed on the network until 2010, leaving Clearwire heavily focused on data, web services and applications that are not traditionally associated with mobile systems, such as M2M.
“The biggest concern from the developer perspective is the size of the near term WiMax network, which will be steadily addressed by the Sprint Xohm-Clearwire merger, and the rapid fire launches of Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, Portland, Atlanta, Grand Rapids, Las Vegas, Boston, Dallas, and Philadelphia, plus the 2009 conversion of Clearwire’s current Expedience [pre-WiMax] markets covering 16.6m US PoPs,” writes ThinkPanmure, as quoted in Unstrung.
It will be important for Xohm to deliver on its promise of creating a wide device ecosystem, which will embrace consumer electronics, handsets, notebooks and UMPCs, machine to machine systems and, eventually, sensors and new-look embedded web gadgets. As with most new networks, once Xohm looks beyond the laptop users, it will need to attract consumers with differentiated devices. Though Baltimore goes live with just a Samsung PC Express card and ZyXel USB modem, the Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC and Nokia N810 Internet Tablet will follow as soon as they have completed certification, as will, apparently, laptops with embedded WiMAX from the likes of Dell, Sony, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Panasonic and Toshiba.