The commercial launch of Sprint’s mobile WiMAX is expected in 1Q08. Most other service providers are expected to formulate their WiMAX strategies accordingly. There are several small commercial WiMAX services around. However they are mostly fixed in nature. Mobile WiMAX is largely confined to trial networks. There are many skeptics who believe that mobile and WiMAX cannot go hand in hand.

A more important question is whether Sprint will be able to drive new subscriptions or are we mostly talking about migration from one service plan to the other. Nevertheless, we are looking at a major test bed. Sprint made investments of $73 million during 3Q07 into its WiMAX project. One of the tests Sprint will carry out for us is whether mobile WiMAX can be something beyond data centric. Once it is established how mobile WiMAX fits in the existing telecom ecosystem in terms of user experiences it will be touch clearer for others to have a go at the service.

Sprint expects revenues of over $2 billion per year by 2010 from mobile WiMAX and majority of that is expected to be new business.