Why Sprint is bullish on its WiMax gamble

10.11.2006

What about point-to-point calling? For point-to-point calling, VoIP over WiMax could be a solution.

Wouldn't that eventually erode revenues from cellular minutes? The scenario of walking down the street and talking will be clearly superior on the CDMA network. The handoffs from cell site to cell site in a data session, there's some latency that's invisible to the data user. The latency has to to be very short, though, or it will be noticed in a voice session. With CDMA, you don't notice. With voice [over WiMax], you will. CDMA will be a much better experience.

What will the speed of the WiMax network be? On average, we'll have between 2Mbit and 4Mbit/sec. when we roll it out. We see WiMax being three to four times as fast as any 3G network.

What are the implications to the enterprise of this new network? We think that anyone or any device that uses broadband today will greatly benefit. Imagine the T1 line in an office; you can bring that wherever you are [with the WiMax network]. In addition, we'll have industry solutions specific for real estate agents, insurance agents, public safety and so on that will exploit the wireless broadband connection.

So this isn't just a consumer play. Absolutely not. There's video conferencing, video chat, high speed file transfer, picture and motion video transfer on a real-time basis wherever you are.