Sprint Nextel to Go WiMAX with Nokia

There are two networking standards battlefronts shaping up this week for CES: 802.11 WiFi, where the question is, "To 'n' or not to 'n?,"' and 802.16, the WiMAX standard that's battling with UMB (the former EV-DO Rev. C) for supremacy in the municipal-area broadband space. Verizon is squarely behind EV-DO, while Cingular is riding high on its EDGE network. Today, Sprint Nextel evened the stakes by bringing Nokia on board as its infrastructure supplier for WiMAX.

This announcement gives each of the three biggest cellular carriers in the US a well-distinguished position on broadband Internet coverage for their respective handsets. Last August, Sprint announced WiMAX as its own way forward, though the company had made overtures toward WiMAX adoption as early as February 2005. Today, the company said it could spend as much as $2.8 billion over the next two years in rolling out its broadband infrastructure. Intel, Motorola, Samsung, and now Nokia will be the big benefactors.

Up to now, WiMAX has had the theoretical throughput lead over EV-DO and HSDPA, with studies showing observed throughput for WiMAX of over 14 Mbps versus just over 4 Mbps for EV-DO Rev. B, and slightly less for HSDPA. But observed throughput isn't the number the marketers like to quote. They cite the theoretical figures instead, which give WiMAX a stratosphere-setting performance of 75 Mbps, along with the asterisk and the small print that says, "One day, we hope to actually observe this."

But somewhere above the stratosphere are the UMB numbers being touted in advance of next week's CES, which aim for 280 Mbps using MIMO technology. That's a tall order, considering they are talking about multiple municipal-area transmitters in tandem.

How Sprint plans to go toe-to-toe with UMB is by means of a massive upgrade of its entire wireless data services network, the company said today. This will include an investment in Nokia's Flexi base transceiver stations (BTS). These transceivers are capable of handling both cellular and data traffic, and up to now have been utilized in EDGE and HSDPA deployments, so Nokia's eggs aren't entirely in one basket with WiMAX. Still, the technology does represent Nokia's leading edge, and the Sprint deal could give WiMAX its most widespread US deployment to date.

With all that investment in wireless broadband, the question becomes, will there be an application that takes advantage of these breakneck speeds? We'll be looking for evidence of this service all next week.