Sprint: Wireless Broadband Decision
I’d do not want to be drawn into the debate whether Sprint was right or wrong in going for Mobile Wimax. Personally, I think they have made the wrong decision.
Instead, I want to focus on the wonders of the US spectrum licensing system, whereby anyone can choose any technology to deploy. In the USA, they now have: T-Mobile and Cingular committed to deploying 3GPP solutions, Verizon Wireless committed to 3GPP2 and Sprint committed to IEEE 802.16e and this is before the forthcoming AWS-1 auction. I can quite easily envisage one of winners deploying either the UMTS-TDD solution, despite the manager sounding a little like a sore loser with the Sprint decision and even the Flash-OFDM solution.
In my opinion, this has in the past and will in the future lead to greater consumer choice and probably better technology worldwide as one standard fights against the other for dominance. With the size of wireless market, there is room for more than one standard and inefficient technology tends to die off pretty quickly, witness the fate of TDMA.
Instead, I want to focus on the wonders of the US spectrum licensing system, whereby anyone can choose any technology to deploy. In the USA, they now have: T-Mobile and Cingular committed to deploying 3GPP solutions, Verizon Wireless committed to 3GPP2 and Sprint committed to IEEE 802.16e and this is before the forthcoming AWS-1 auction. I can quite easily envisage one of winners deploying either the UMTS-TDD solution, despite the manager sounding a little like a sore loser with the Sprint decision and even the Flash-OFDM solution.
In my opinion, this has in the past and will in the future lead to greater consumer choice and probably better technology worldwide as one standard fights against the other for dominance. With the size of wireless market, there is room for more than one standard and inefficient technology tends to die off pretty quickly, witness the fate of TDMA.
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