Sprint plays kingmaker in mobile TV with IPWireless trial

Rethink IT, March, 2006

Sprint plays kingmaker in mobile TV with IPWireless trial Since Sprint Nextel merged and became aggressive about plans to build out its large holdings in 2.5GHz, it has been assumed that these plans would rest on WiMAX. The telco is in close alliances and equipment trials with two pre-WiMAX vendors, Motorola and Samsung, and has development partnerships with Intel and other key 802.16 players. But in the background, Nextel had an ongoing trial of a rival technology, IPWireless' implementation of the TD-CDMA standard, and now the combined carrier has made an investment in IPWireless just as the vendor announces a system for an application close to Sprints heart, mobile television.

A closer relationship between Sprint Nextel and IPWireless would be bad news for various technology factions, particularly in the mobile television market--increasingly seen by large carriers as a killer application, and one where all the major wireless platforms except WiMAX are promoting a different solution.

The situation highlights the challenges ahead for WiMAX. While the $10m investment in IPWireless is not a major spend by Sprint standards, and a trial certainly does not guarantee that Sprint will chose the IPWireless platform--large equipment suppliers and successful real world performance outside the 3G bands will be two issues--it does make it clear that the carrier is not fully committed to WiMAX for its 2.5GHz roll-out, which will be one of the world's largest in the band. 802.16e and its backers are going to have to fight for every deal against 3G derivatives and Qualcomm, and there are areas, such as high mobility and mobile television, which are of interest to many carriers and where it has not yet made significant progress.