Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

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Report: Sprint To Choose WiMAX For 4G Network
from the finally dept

http://techdirt.com/articles/20060808/0552258.shtml

One big motivation behind the Sprint-Nextel merger was the huge amount of 2.5 GHz spectrum the combined company would own. Before the merger, both companies had been testing various wireless broadband technologies from multiple vendors with the intention of building a fourth-generation network in the spectrum, and despite an investment in IPWireless and comments about other technologies, the WSJ is reporting that later today, Sprint will announce it's chosen to use WiMAX for the network. This would be a huge boost for the technology, which thus far has been long on hype but short on large-scale rollouts. It would also be a big win for Intel, which has pumped a lot of money into WiMAX, with the hope of creating a market its chips can dominate. One strong contender for the new Sprint network was Flash-OFDM technology from Flarion, which was then bought by Qualcomm. But it's widely believed that Qualcomm' control of the technology worked against it, as part of the growing backlash against Qualcomm's IP licensing practices. Choosing WiMAX may not get operators like Sprint totally out of the woods, though, as Qualcomm has acted like it has IP that's relevant to WiMAX. Also keep in mind that this new WiMAX network would be in addition to Sprint's existing CDMA mobile network, which it continues to upgrade. One significant challenge for the company will be convincing consumers and investors of the value of this new network, and that it's not redundant.