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.