Guess what everyone, Sprint is ready to take on the WiMax challenge. Anyone care to place bets on how badly this one will turn out?

Sprint Nextel has given WiMax technology a green light, becoming the first major U.S. carrier to back WiMax for its fourth-generation (4G) wireless data network.

The third-largest U.S. mobile operator plans to start rolling out the WiMax network in late 2007 and hopes to reach as many as 100 million people with the service by the end of 2008. Offering downstream speeds of 2M bps (bits per second) to 4M bps, WiMax promises new power for bandwidth-hungry applications like mobile videoconferencing and large enterprise file transfers.
With 4G, enterprises will be able to buy guaranteed throughput from a carrier, something they can’t do with 3G, said Tad Neeley, an analyst at Gemini Partners Inc. For example, if a company paid for 1.5M bps upstream and downstream, remote employees could count on that speed no matter how busy the network was…. Source: InfoWorld