Sprint WiMax-Xohm Will Fail Again

Sprint WiMax-Xohm Will Fail Again

by Tao Zhang, Reporter, World Mobile Congress

Sprint had been trying to kickoff broadband wireless business for over decade. Starting from wireless and mobile ATM, to MMDS and LMDS, Sprint failed too many times. Sprint would repeat the failure story again in this WiMax trial for reasons as follows:

1. Sprint's management is too questionable to manage such a big technology movement;
2. Sprint does not have enough capitals to deploy such a money-burning project;
3. No big partners including Intel will invest dollars in Sprint Xohm movement which places Spring in a very risky situation;
4. There are still lots of technical arguments about Sprint Xohm's seamless mobility features because no single wireless standard can do both broadband high-speed and seamless mobility. Therefore, Xohm may become another lesson of MMDS if it only supports fixed broadband wireless access or limited-mobility wireless access;
5. The business model of Xohm is not clear in terms of how open the Xohm networks are and what is the targeted market segment - mobile handphone market vs. wireless laptop market?
6. The international standards are not clear for Xohm solution - LTE is gaining worldwide against WiMax, and some countries including China may support LTE instead of WiMax;
7. The long-term strategy of Xohm movement is not clear in terms of convergence of multiple wireless standards and open wireless infrastructure.

All these issues make Sprint Xohm very risky and challenging for investors and users. Therefore, I believe Sprint feels hard to deploy this network successfully. Without huge investment from key partners which is even harder at this economic situation, Sprint will fail in this business again.

WiMax is a very good technology, but Sprint is just not qualified to deply it.

Tao Zhang, Reporter
World Mobile Congress
Europe