The pricing plans will be a change from what traditional cell phone and Internet service providers typically offer their customers. Sprint will offer a $10 "daily pass," a $25 "home" monthly plan and a $30 "on-the-go" monthly plan for mobile devices.
The "home" and "on-the-go" services can be combined for $50 a month for a lifetime of service, as part of a limited promotion, according to Sprint spokesman John Polivka.
XOHM, which will spin off into a new company in which Sprint will retain majority ownership, is at least two years ahead of other major competitors' efforts to give consumers a similar high-speed wireless broadband network, analysts said. The head start is important as XOHM hopes to use its lead in the marketplace to foster widespread consumer adoption of its network, company officials said.
During a demonstration for a Baltimore Sun reporter two weeks ago, officials with Sprint drove through the city in a van, which featured a 23-inch television and several wireless laptops. Using the WiMAX network, a Sprint employee visited a popular video Web site and began watching the movie Men in Black without any disruption. The download speed was about six megabytes per second, the officials said.
That kind of download speed compares favorably with the performance of wired options for home use, such as cable modems and digital subscriber lines offered through telephone companies. Broadband download speeds for wired residential use range from below one megabyte to up to seven megabytes per second in the Baltimore area, with costs that typically start in the low $20 range.
Sean Maloney, chief sales and marketing officer for Intel Corp., which is embedding WiMAX chips in computers that will hit the market soon, said the technology will support a wireless device market that some believe has the potential to be bigger than the personal computer market.
About the launch of WiMAX in the city this week, Maloney said: "I think you're going to get a lot of geeks coming by to check it out. Baltimore will be temporarily the geek capital of the world."
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For periodic updates on WiMAX, read the consumer blog at baltimoresun.com/consuminginterests
