Sprint at CES revealed that a soft launch of its Xohm WiMax-based mobile wireless Internet service is underway with employees in several cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C., ahead of a scheduled commercial launch across select U.S. cities later this year.
To support its WiMax bid, Sprint has signed on several partners, including Amdocs, which will maintain the Xohm Internet portal, SwapDrive for hosted storage, eTelecare Global Solutions for customer care and McAfee for online security for computers connected to the WiMax network.
In addition, several hardware vendors also disclosed plans for Xohm-compatible devices, including OQO, which will embed wireless connectivity into its ultra-mobile PCs, and AsusTek, which is also building devices with WiMax support. ZyXel and its chip partner, Sequans, said they will be building an access device for the service, dubbed the ZyXel Max-206m2 (pictured). The device is a 4G modem/router with built-in residential gateway functions. It is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2008.
