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Sprint WiMax is Live In Los Angeles! Well, Sorta [Update]

Categories: Mobile Broadband, Sprint, WiMAX
By: , IntoMobile
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 5:05 PM

When Sprint announced the EVO 4G with WiMax, we mobile nerds became all kinds of excited. The only problem was that it was live in cities like Lubbock, Texas and who-knows-where-else. Big metropolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco were missing from the picture, but we were promised that WiMax would be going live in those cities soon. It looks like the rollout for the big boys has begun.

We’ve received multiple reports from multiple sources in Los Angeles that WiMax/4G is popping up on their HTC EVO 4G devices. Now, before you get too excited, it’s not available everywhere in the city. It seems that range is limited to very small, select areas. It seems that the west side, parts of Downtown and areas near the 405 freeway are lit up.

We’ve reached out to Sprint to confirm this and hopefully get a better picture as to when the city will be blanketed with WiMax goodness, so be sure to check back and we’ll update here as news comes our way.

If you just happen to be scratching your head wondering what WiMax is, or you’re curious to know whether the other 4G technology, LTE, is better, be sure to check out our LTE vs. WiMax shootout!

[Update]
We just heard from Sprint that there may be some testing going on in the Los Angeles area, so if you are experiencing the wonderful joys of WiMax at the moment, don’t keep your hopes up. According to Sprint, WiMax for L.A. is still scheduled to go live this year, but not at the moment. If you find yourself stumbling into 4G areas, it’s likely because the WiMax network was turned up for testing, building and optimizing before things finally go live. That means it will be shut off once testing is over.

About The Author

Marc Flores

Marc has been a mobile fanatic for the better part of a decade and has had more devices pass through his hands than he would care to count. Originally from Los Angeles and briefly in San Francisco, Marc now lives in Brooklyn where, unlike Will Park, he longs for simpler times and simpler technology. All the while, he writes about gadgets and wireless technology as he tinkers, hacks and ultimately breaks most of his gadgets in the process. Marc has written about the mobile industry for Boy Genius Report, MobileCrunch, Laptop Magazine and has had his work appear in the Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, CrunchGear and more.

  • Delcio Acosta

    Hey, I live in New York City. I live in Inwood. (10034) That's up in northern Manhattan. I have been getting 4G here too. I have been taking advantage of the free month of tethering. I have used like 3GB (359,213KB) of data downloading some movies and software from my school's servers since June 7th! You can hit me up on facebook if you want, I'll give you a pic.

  • Jay

    I live on the West Side, closer to the city and I’ve got a 4G signal available. I ran some speed tests and although it’s not yet a whole lot faster than 3G offerings, it’s definitely better. I’m consistently seeing about 2.8Mbps down and just under 1Mbps up (on 3G I see about 1.2Mbps down and 400Kbps up). Download matches my typical experience with Time Warner, upload is twice as fast as Time Warner. I’m leaving this comment while on it & uploading a large file to a server at the same time. I hope they don’t turn it off prior to official roll-out, it’s pretty useful although it’s not needed all the time. If official roll-out will be even faster, I’ll be a very happy customer.

    • MSM

      Last time I checked more than double the speed is "a whole lot faster"

  • Scott

    i am getting 4G in many places in Los Angeles i use it every day in Marina Del Rey for the past month or more.

    My speed tests have been as high as 8505/1042 kbps and generally greater than 5000/900…..!

    Cant wait till it is live all over will get rid of my data card since i have used EVO hotspot only for over a month now….

    With 4G you can get hotspot data and phone calls at the same time……