Sprint Names New Partners For WiMAX Service

Just shy of its September rollout in Baltimore, Sprint Nextel Thursday signed up new partners for its new location-enabled wireless broadband service, XOHM WiMAX.

XOHM, a Sprint business division, has partnered with Boston-based uLocate Communications, which helped the company build out its mobile services. Other partners include: AccuWeather, which will provide forecasts; Google, and its local search capabilities from Google Maps; and Autodesk of San Rafael, Calif., which will add a standards-based interface and geospatial services, such as addresses, zip code and city/state information, to enhance location within the XOHM network.

"The XOHM mobile broadband experience will be largely location-centric," said Rick Robinson, vice president of XOHM Services, in a statement. "We're creating a new dimension to online presence, making points of interest near your current location easy to identify and access. This 'geobrowsing' effect provides location context and will give XOHM members a richer personal broadband experience when they're mobile."

The company's WiMAX service provides location and personalization capabilities that lets users find businesses, entertainment and check weather and traffic. Features can be customized and used on WiMAX-capable devices such as laptops, mobile Internet devices, media players, cameras and car navigation systems.

XOHM is also enabling Web services application programming interfaces (APIs) for service developers and device partners can use location to offer more features for subscribers.

WiMAX has been heavily hyped and attracted great interest from the usual suspects: Cisco, Intel, Juniper Networks, Motorola, Samsung and Nortel, among others.

In 2006, Sprint plunked down $5 billion to invest in building out WiMAX technology. In January 2008, the company did a soft launch of the service. In May, Sprint upped the ante, and teamed up with primary investment partner Clearwater to form a new mobile broadband company, Clearwire. Other partners in the venture are: Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.