NEW YORK—While the full ramifications of Sprint Nextel Corp.’s plan to deploy a WiMAX network remain uncertain, it’s clear that the early winners are Intel Corp., Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.—while the biggest loser is Qualcomm Inc. and its Flarion Technologies Inc.-developed Flash-OFDM technology.
During a press conference, Sprint Nextel Chief Technology Officer Barry West said the carrier’s decision came down to which technology was best suited to function in Sprint Nextel’s vast spectrum holdings in the 2.5 GHz band as well as which technology included the necessary components such as handsets, infrastructure and chipsets—all available for deployments by early 2008.
Sprint Nextel plans to spend about $1 billion on 4G in 2007 and between $1.5 billion to $2 billion in 2008.
West noted that Sprint Nextel evaluated a number of technologies, including IPWireless Inc.’s TD-CDMA technology and Qualcomm’s Flash-OFDM solutions. West said the best option was the combination of Intel’s WiMAX chipsets, Motorola’s single and dual-mode devices and base stations and Samsung’s infrastructure.
Although Intel has seemingly won the first round in the battle to sell 4G technology, Qualcomm could very well be planning to launch an OFDM licensing scheme that could force Intel and other WiMAX vendors to pay Qualcomm nonetheless. Qualcomm argues that its OFDM technology forms the basis for WiMAX.
