Baltimore gets mobile WiMAX

INTEL FINALLY HAS reason to rejoice about WiMAX, following the ClearWire mess, as they’ve finally managed to see their 4G technology come to fruition with a partner with big plans and deep pockets... Sprint.

Enacting a symbolic Ethernet cable cutting ceremony yesterday at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Sprint, Intel and friends inaugurated the XOHM mobile WiMAX network in (which isn’t really the first US mobile WiMAX deployment).

Barry West, XOHM president stated “Nothing has ignited the imagination of a cross section of industries and the partnership of an ecosystem the way WiMAX technology has. We are delighted with the reception we have received." Reception, we hope, wasn’t a clever double entendre.

Some of the launch partners were waiting on hand to pitch their goods while others were announcing upcoming hardware. Actually there were probably more partners than journalists attending the event, although we’re pretty sure no-one did a headcount. You’ve got Google, Intel, Motorola, Nokia, Nokia-Siemens, ZTE, Samsung, ZyXEL, Sprint/XOHM, Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo and the list goes on and on.

Samsung is providing the ExpressCard, ZyXEL the desktop modem and ZTE will eventually bring along the USB dongle, which is not yet available. These are 4G modems so, although you can take your internet with you, you're stuck in Baltimore. Later in the year XOHM will pitch dual-mode 3G/4G modems so you can actually take your internet beyond the county line.

Intel, of course, is hopping up and down with happiness. This means it's found a market to flog gazillions of Echo Peak modules on the Montevina platform…

Hacks-in-attendance were given an opportunity to fool around with the mobile WiMAX, they were put in harbour taxis and driven around to test the connection until they were happy or puked from motion sickness, whichever came first.

The XOHM proposal varies from $25 to $35 in the beginning - it’s a promotional offer, you see – and then gets bumped over and up. There’s also a ‘pay as you go’ option, which means you can use XOHM even if you don’t have a long-term contract with them.

Each account will let you have three devices logged in, according to the terms of service - we've mailed them about this as that could be potentially misunderstood as three people having each one 4G modem could share the same login data or three people sharing the same connection on the same modem... No details on bandwidth or traffic capping, though.

We’d just like to point out that consumers are used to 3G data rates and quality of service, and are being promised the equivalent to their land-line's DSL or Cable internet services. That’s raising expectations, to say the least. The total absence of facts and figures on the XOHM website offers little insurance for those doing some comparative shopping. On our side, we’re hearing 2-to-4 Mbps effective downlink which is pretty rubbish if you’re comparing your $/Mbps ratio to landlines.

In fact, we’d say if you’re a gamer you’d steer away from wireless connections altogether, as the WiMAX base station communication will give you a 100ms ‘bonus’ to your latency.

Sprint, in charge of providing the infrastructure, has been working on the city-wide deployment for the better part of a year (that we know of) and made its appearance under its XOHM business unit.

That’s the current name for Sprint’s mobile WiMAX division, in case you hadn’t heard. Unfortunately, come end of the year when Sprint finalises its acquisition of ClearWire and integrates both units, the new company will revert back to being named ClearWire… confusing, innit?