Today Sprint launched 4G WiMAX service in Richmond, Va., Salt Lake City and St. Louis. Customers can use the 4G capabilities of the EVO phone, or connect with the Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot, the 3G/4G USB dongle 250U from Sierra Wireless or Sprint’s 3G/4G USB U301 dongle (from Franklin Wireless) for 4G connectivity with 3G fallback.
Sprint also announced the Samsung Epic 4G phone, Samsung’s first 4G Android-powered device. The Epic 4G features a 4″ WVGA Super AMOLED display, sliding QWERTY keypad, 5 megapixel camera with 720p video capture, front-facing camera for video calling, GPS, Wi-Fi b/g/n, mobile hotspot support for five devices, six-axis motion sensor, 1GHz Hummingbird processor, and 512MB RAM / 1GB ROM.
The Samsung Epic 4G will have access to the Samsung Media Hub, a video store with movies and TV available for purchase or rental and optimized for a handset screen. Sprint hasn’t mentioned price or a release date just yet.
The Samsung phone is only the second device – after the HTC EVO phone – that has access to “4G” service. Competitor Verizon Wireless isn’t expected to have a “4G” (LTE) phone for a year or so.
With today’s launches, Sprint 4G is now available in 36 markets across the country.
As Sprint customers begin their summer travel, the company says, they will find that 4G is available in many markets across the country: Georgia – Atlanta, Milledgeville; Hawaii – Honolulu, Maui; Idaho – Boise; Illinois – Chicago; Maryland – Baltimore; Missouri – Kansas City, St. Louis; Nevada – Las Vegas; North Carolina – Charlotte, Greensboro (along with High Point and Winston-Salem), Raleigh (along with Cary, Chapel Hill and Durham); Oregon – Portland, Salem; Pennsylvania – Harrisburg, Lancaster, Philadelphia, Reading, York; Texas – Abilene, Amarillo, Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Killeen/Temple, Lubbock, Midland/Odessa, San Antonio, Waco, Wichita Falls; Utah – Salt Lake City; Virginia – Richmond; Washington – Bellingham, Seattle.
In 2010, Sprint expects to launch 4G service in multiple markets, including Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Sprint hopes to cover some 100 million people by the end of the year. Verizon has similar targets with LTE.
The technology differences between LTE and WiMAX may matter less than the frequency they use. Sprint uses the 2.6 GHz band (with 120 MHz available) while Verizon will use the 700 MHz band (with 22Mhz available). Verizon’s lower frequency travels about 3 times further than Sprint’s, with each tower serving more people. Verizon has less spectrum to serve more people. Sprint may be faster but spottier.
To improve coverage in the 2.6 GHz band, an enhanced IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard has been approved for the next WiMAX Forum release (pdf). It increases effective power at the outer edges of a WiMAX cell to increase the coverage up to 70%, along with improved spectral efficiency and a potential doubling of peak data rates, and improved frequency Reuse schemes.
In support of the 802.16e Enhanced standard, Motorola is integrating beamforming from ArrayComm into their wireless broadband products. The WiMAX Forum estimates these new features have the potential to double peak data rates and increase average and cell edge end-user performance by up to 70 percent while still remaining compliant with the 802.16e standard.
Utilizing 2.6GHz in urban cores and 700 MHz in rural areas would be ideal. Some speculate that Sprint, which owns 51% of Clearwire, could transition to TD-LTE, then lease or sell spectrum to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
