Sprint and Samsung Ready with Mobile WiMAX

Sprint and Samsung Electronics announced that a trial WiMAX network has met Sprint’s commercial acceptance criteria including overall performance, handoff performance and handoff delay. The companies said they passed this key technical milestone after extensive evaluation both in the XOHM lab environment and with the commercial service network being built in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area. Sprint plans on launching commercial WiMAX service in those cities later this year.

Samsung has been working with Sprint in the United States to test and build Sprint’s XOHM mobile broadband Internet service compliant to the mobile WiMAX standard. The companies finalizing a supply agreement in 2007. Key milestones in this cooperation have included:

• First data session in the lab — June 2007
• First data session on the live network — October 2007
• Successful interoperability testing with multiple other device vendors — April 2008.

“This is a major step towards launch readiness and Sprint is extremely pleased with the performance of the mobile WiMAX network and access devices from Samsung,” said Barry West, XOHM president. “The collaboration with Samsung and our other partners has created a WiMAX ecosystem that has now proven that it can deliver this new technology to the marketplace well ahead of any feasible alternative.”http://www.sprint.comhttp://www.samsung.com

• In April, Samsung introduced several WiMAX-enabled devices, including its Express Card (E100 PC Card) and a WiMAX-embedded UMPC (Q1 Ultra Premium Mobile PC).