WiMAX is officially a 3G technology – wait a sec…
By Will Park on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 1:37 PM PST In Announcements, Services, Technologies
We love up and coming technology, especially when it relates to the mobile space. Take, for example, the burgeoning 4G technologies that’ll bring us ever faster wireless broadband downloads and even uploads – you know, things like LTE, EVDO Rev. C (Ultra Mobile Broadband), and WiMAX. What’s that you say? WiMAX is a 3G technology? Wait a sec…wasn’t WiMAX supposed to put Sprint (NYSE: S) on top of the 4G game?
Well, according to recent certification by the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union, WiMAX is officially a 3G communications standard. Aside from the fact that WiMAX is now an industry-recognized standard and will be as accepted as WCDMA technologies for wireless broadband, the fact that WiMAX has been dubbed a 3G technology is a bit of a surprise. We’ve been referring to the higher-speed WiMAX standard as a 4G technology, but it looks like we’ll have to start referring to WiMAX as a 3G tech.
Poor Sprint. We thought they were staying ahead of the high-speed wireless curve by developing a next-gen 4G WiMAX network, but it looks like they’ll just be playing the same old 3G field. So much for getting the US on the cutting edge.
[Via: Yahoo]
Sounds to me like Sprint is still ahead of the game after reading the complete article
Right, they’ll be ahead of the competition with faster wireless speeds, but they can’t lay claim to being a 4G network with XOHM/WiMAX.
When most people hear that Sprint’s WiMAX is “just” a 3G technology, they’ll automatically assume that it’s yesterday’s news. That’s a shame.