This September, Baltimore will be the first city in the country where residents can get wired Internet speeds — with downloads between 2 and 4 megabits per second — without any wires.
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says the company will expand service to Washington and Chicago by year’s end. He didn’t specify when the next wave of WiMax cities — a group that includes Dallas — will come on the internet.
CNET covered Hesse’s speech at a Las Vegas trade show and explained why WiMax has many people excited:
“As fast as (3G networks) are today, nothing will define wireless broadband like WiMax,” he said. “The 4G technology is wireless at rocket speeds. And Sprint could have a two-year head start in providing broadband wirelessly at landline speeds.”
He talked about using the new WiMax network to provide Internet connectivity to a slew of consumer electronics devices such as cameras, as well as bringing new services to cars, allowing parents to download videos directly to their automobiles while traveling so their children could watch movies in the back seat.
Nate Anderson of Ars Technica gives another reason for excitement. Sprint’s WiMax network will be open to any device from any manufacturer (so long as it doesn’t hurt the network):
This is why Hesse pitched a vision of a world in which wireless network access breaks free from “cell phone groupthink.” In such a world, almost any device can join Sprint’s network, and the company will make its cash from selling data plans for any device (Sprint has already taken this approach, one reason it became the wireless EV-DO provider for the Kindle’s download service).
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