Sprint will NOT Abandon WiMAX customers or Clearwire after deploying LTE, but no plans for 4G APIs!
Received today from Kristin Wallace, Sprint Corp Communications Mgr:
1. On the topic of Sprint’s 4G Strategy related to WiMAX, Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse made the following comment related to Sprint’s 4G strategy at the Credit Suisse Convergence conference earlier this year (March 2011), “In every option that we’re looking at, every one includes WiMAX and Clearwire, both.”
2. Sprint has not made any public announcements about future support related to 4G APIs.
We continue to evaluate potential product offers that leverage and would require the commercialization of QoS capabilities supported by 4G WiMax and other (OFDMA) technologies.
AW Comment: Note that Clearwire announced several 4G WiMAX APIs at the Oct 2009 Sprint Developer Conference. Those included Connection Manager, Location, RF Awareness, and (future support) of QoS. The idea was to be able to have a common API to do those functions that was not dependent on the silicon inside of the WiMAX device/ handset/ adapter card.
The Clearwire Silicon Valley Innovation network and Developer Program shut down last year due to lack of funds and Sprint decided not to pick it up. Now we hear that there will be no support of 4G APIs, which translates into the broadband wireless network (WiMAX or LTE) being just a dumb fat pipe!
In particular, RF awareness would be great for optimizaiton of mobile video, while QoS could be used for a number of delay or jitter sensitive applications. e.g. video conferencing/ video chat or even Voice over WiMAX/LTE. Kiss em goodbye! Thanks a lot Sprint! ::((