A first look at Xohm

The availability of consumer devices will be determined by addressable market though, and with only one market launched Xohm hasn’t yet presented the most compelling case for high volume sales. That scale will increase gradually this fall as Samsung expands the greater Baltimore network to encompass the nation’s capital and surrounding regions. Motorola will kick off its regional build-out with the launch of Chicago. By next year, Sprint and Clearwire hope to have completed their merger of WiMAX assets bringing an additional $3.2 billion investment from Intel, Google and the cable operators and allowing them to coordinate their launch schedules. Clearwire already has a live trial of WiMAX running in Portland and is selling nomadic PC card services on its legacy NextNet network in many markets.

Clearwire plans to make Portland commercial by the end of the year, even if the Sprint deal hasn’t closed. It is rolling out networks in three other markets: Atlanta, Las Vegas and Grand Rapids, Mich. In 2009 in plans to expand by converting its fixed-wireless NextNet gear to full mobile WiMAX in 31 markets. Sprint will continue its rollout in 2009 with the launch of Nokia Siemens Networks’ first region, the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex, followed by three more Samsung networks in Philadelphia, Boston and Providence. Of Sprint’s three vendors, Samsung clearly is the furthest ahead with its deployment as Sprint keeps awarding the Korean vendor contracts, including the highly prized New York contract.

While most of Xohm’s revenue will come from access plans, the service is pinning hopes on a supplemental revenue business powered by the Xohm portal. The customizable Web home screen offers an array of location-based services from partners, including Google which is supplying the overarching search and mapping functions. While customers are free to navigate away from the portal and use any other provider’s Web services, only those on its portal can tap into the location API of the network, making Xohm services the only ones that can predetermine a customer's exact location. At first the service will use cellular triangulation, but GPS will be incorporated into future devices.