Partnerships Shed Light on Sprint’s Xohm Plans
A slew of Xohm partnerships announced Tuesday mean Sprint Nextel is still seriously pursuing WiMAX, analysts told Communications Daily. The deals also shed light on what the wireless broadband service will look like when it starts commercially this year. Sprint announced eight Xohm partnerships Tuesday. For its Xohm customer portal, Sprint signed Amdocs, SwapDrive, eTelecare and McAfee. To add WiMAX-embedded devices to its product list, Sprint is teaming with OQO, ASUSTek and Zyxel. Sprint named ad agency Soho Square to promote the North American Xohm launch. Financial terms aren’t being disclosed, a Sprint spokeswoman said.
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The agreements give evidence that “WiMAX is a go,” but won’t kill speculation that Sprint intends to spin off Xohm to Clearwire, said Current Analysis’s William Ho in an interview. Whether it sells the business or not, Sprint must build a sturdy network ecosystem to maximize value, he said. Jefferies analyst Jonathan Schildkraut agreed. “These moves still position [Sprint] to do something with Clearwire down the line,” he said. That deal could take form as a spinoff to Clearwire, but it could also be a joint venture or acquisition, he said.
Clearwire might want a spinoff, but Tuesday’s news is an “early indication” that Sprint isn’t seeking to sell, Wintergreen Research analyst Susan Eustis said in an interview. “No way would they make these announcements without a clear intent of staying in the business,” Eustis said. When Clearwire pulled out of a WiMAX partnership with Sprint, it was a “huge blow” to Sprint. The companies are probably in talks for a joint venture on new terms, but it’s “not in Sprint’s interest” to sell Xohm, she said.
Amdocs signed a multiyear agreement to be the prime systems integrator responsible for building and keeping up Xohm’s mobile portal, Sprint said. Amdocs will also provide a billing system, including ordering, service activation and provisioning, customer relationship management and self- service and billing operations, Sprint said. The choice isn’t surprising, since Amdocs already does billing for Sprint, Ho said.
SwapDrive will host storage space where Xohm subscribers can secure, manage and access user-generated digital content using any device with a supported browser, Sprint said. Sprint hasn’t announced pricing, but the intent is to give Xohm subscribers a set amount of space and let them pay for more if they want, said SwapDrive CEO David Steinberg. SwapDrive gets revenue based on the number of Xohm subscribers, he said.
Modem maker Zyxel has worked with chip supplier Sequans to build Sprint a mobile WiMAX device, set to launch with Xohm, Zyxel said. The Zyxel MAX-206m2 device, on show at CES and set to go on sale in the second quarter, has a traditional wireline jack and looks made for fixed-line substitution, Ho told us from the CES show floor. That means Sprint and Clearwire could be after some of Verizon and AT&T’s business, he said. Zyxel and Sequans are also taking part in Sprint interoperability testing, Zyxel said. Sprint previously named Zyxel as a Xohm collaborator, but hadn’t revealed the device.
OQO is embedding 802.16e Mobile WiMAX into an ultra mobile PC to be released 2008, it said Monday. The device’s CES demonstration represents the “first trial of Xohm compatible WiMAX capabilities embedded in an ultra mobile PC,” it said.
Fewer details were available on other Xohm partnerships at our deadline. McAfee is developing online security products for PCs using Xohm, while ASUStek is planning a line of WiMAX devices for 2008, Sprint said. ETelecare will provide voice and e-support customer care services, Sprint said.
A Xohm soft launch is under way. Sprint employees are testing the service in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The commercial WiMAX launch is set to start “later this year” in select U.S. cities, Sprint said.
Meanwhile, Smith Micro Software and WiMAX chip maker Beceem said they successfully combined Beceem’s BCS200 Mobile WiMAX Wave 2 chipset with Smith Micro’s WiMAX connection manager. The companies didn’t identify Sprint or Clearwire as customers but said the news ensured WiMAX operators would be able to “move forward with their 2008 scheduled launches.”