Sprint Nextel zooming with Xohm: Carrier inks slew of WiMAX deals

Sprint Nextel Corp. made several announcements this week that lend a sense of momentum to the carrier’s plans to deploy its WiMAX service, dubbed Xohm, on schedule.
Since the collapse last year of a Sprint Nextel deal with Clearwire Corp. to mesh their WiMAX efforts, and a change of CEOs at Sprint Nextel, the carrier’s plans have been under internal review and the subject of external speculation.
The carrier’s Xohm news this week included tangible devices designed to run on the Xohm network, and Sprint Nextel deals with a range of vendors.
OQO Inc. demonstrated an ultra mobile PC compatible with Sprint’s Xohm service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, but buried in the related press release is a caveat that may continue to fuel doubts that Sprint Nextel would like to quell.
“OQO today is announcing a technology demonstration . and is not presently making available a product for sale with such functionality,” the San Francisco-based device maker said in a release under OQO’s letterhead, which quotes a Sprint Nextel executive. “With this announcement, OQO does not make any representations about product availability.”
No such caveats were expressed in Sprint Nextel-issued press releases announcing a deal with Amdocs, a company that will support a mobile portal for Xohm’s service offerings by providing service activation, provisioning and customer service, and with advertising agency Soho Square, which will help build the Xohm brand in the United States. Deals were also announced with SwapDrive for hosted data storage, with eTelecare Global Solutions for customer service and with McAfee Inc. for online security. Details on the terms of those deals were not provided.
Other device makers at CES in Las Vegas that announced plans to support Xohm — but which apparently fall short of hard commitments — include Taiwan-based ASUSTek, which said it will pursue a line of WiMAX-compatible devices for availability this year, and Zyxel Inc., an Anaheim, Calif.-based company pursuing a WiMAX modem for subscribers.
Sprint Nextel reiterated its soft launch, now underway with Sprint Nextel employees, in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and has said it will spend $5 billion on its U.S. WiMAX network within three years.
Intel Corp., a key backer of the U.S. carrier’s WiMAX efforts, said yesterday that it predicted widespread deployment of the technology over the next two years, including in Russia and Japan, according to a report by Reuters.