The battle between WiMAX and LTE is getting very interesting and frankly very confusing – at least to me.
It was just last month Sprint rolled out their WiMAX in a handful of new metropolitan areas including Washington, D.C. According to Financial Times, Sprint is now considering an LTE strategy that could pave the way to a merger with T-Mobile USA. After spending all those $$$ Billion on WiMAX?
The talk of Sprint switching to an LTE based 4G future gives more credence to the ever circling rumors that T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom is considering a merger of its #4 T-Mobile USA division with Sprint, which currently is a distant number 3 in the U.S. market. In the past, the differing 3G technologies (CDMA vs. UMTS) made a merger seem unlikely, but if both were to plan ahead for LTE, then the two companies’ futures would be a bit more in step.
Sprint has already launched a hard hitting marketing campaign, pitching its 4G service as delivering download speeds “up to ten times faster than 3G”. The carrier’s WiMAX network covers 43 million people across 33 markets and Sprint expects to have up to 120 million people covered by the end of 2010. Their market includes Rochester, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Merced, Calif., Visalia, Calif., Eugene, Ore., Tri-Cities, Wash., and Yakima, Wash. taking the company’s 4G offering to 43 markets, with plans for Los Angeles, New York and Miami by the end of 2010.
Last month the company also trumpeted the launch of its first WiMAX-enabled handset, the HTC Evo 4G, which sold so well it marked the largest quantity of a single phone sold in one day ever for Sprint.
In fact it is now understood that HTC can’t deliver Evos fast enough, putting something of a crimp in Sprint’s plans to boost its subscriber base.
In their talks with Financial Times, Sprint admitted, though, that there was a certain “logic” to a Sprint and T-Mobile USA merger, but they declined to discuss any active talks that might be taking place.
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Tagged: 3g, 4g, cdma, Evos, lte, lte network, m&A, merger, mobile wimax network, Sprint, t-mobile, T-Mobile USA, UMTS, wimax, WiMAX network HTC Evo 4G, Wireless
