Sprint plans to make a major announcement regarding its 4G plans, according to comments from CEO Dan Hesse and this will immediately start rumors that the third-largest carrier plans to light up its own 4G LTE network like Verizon and AT&T have (or will soon have in Ma Bell’s case).
“We’re going to come out with a great story this fall around 4G, and it’ll all become clear,” Hesse told Engadget.
To be fair, that somewhat benign quote doesn’t indicate huge changes, as a “great story” could very well be an awesome lineup of phones and tablets which can take advantage of its WiMax infrastructure. Although a crazy hypothetical, I’m sure a WiMax-enabled iPhone would definitely fall into the “great story” category.
Still, the winds of change are a’blowing and it appears as if many carriers will want to standardize around 4G LTE. Rumors suggest that is has signed an agreement with LightSquared to get this 4G LTE network up and running and it wouldn’t necessarily have to fully kill its WiMax network to roll out this new one.
I’d imagine we’ll hear this news somewhere around the CTIA Fall show and you can be sure that IntoMobile will be there. Sprint is still way behind Verizon and AT&T in terms of customers (and will be even more so if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger goes through) but it actually has a lot of spectrum to play with, so it could make some real noise. We’ll see.
[Via Engagdet]