Sprint bringing 4G to Maui, Charlotte, Austin, Boise
updated 09:15 pm EDT, Tue August 11, 2009
Sprint expanding 4G range
Sprint on Tuesday announced plans to expand its 4G WiMAX service to 17 additional cities in Hawaii, Idaho, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and Washington. The carrier claims mobile broadband speeds reaching 10 Mb/s while downloading or between 3-6 Mb/s for uploads. The 4G service is said to exceed 3G speeds by a factor of three to five.
The new markets for 2009 include Texas cities Abilene, Amarillo, Austin, Corpus Christi, Killeen-Temple, Lubbock, Midland-Odessa, San Antonio, Waco and Whicita Falls. The service will also arrive in Boise, Idaho; Bellingham, Washington; Maui, Hawaii; Salem, Oregon; and North Carolina locations including Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh.
Sprint currently offers the service only in Baltimore. The first new 4G areas scheduled for Auguest include Atlanta, Las Vegas and Portland. Chicago, Dallas-Forth Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle are set to follow later in the year.
Grizzled Veteran
Joined: Jul 2004
Not 4G
Wimax is not an industry standard for cellphone data. It was never meant for that purpose. LTE is the only 4G standard but Sprint is one of the few hold outs because LTE is the 4G standard for GSM and they do not want to switch from CDMA.
LTE will be used by AT&T, Verizon and Micro PCS in the states and Rogers, Fido, Telus and Bell in Canada.