Sprint begins EV-DO launch

Sprint today said it would launch its first 3G networks this month, kicking off a nationwide CDMA 1X EV-DO rollout first targeting airports and downtown business districts and expanding to 60 metropolitan areas covering 143 million people.

Sprint said it would launch initial service in airports and central business districts in 34 markets this month. Throughout the year Sprint will expand outward on those initial deployments covering full metropolitan areas. In the third quarter, Sprint plans to have 14 metro areas broadly covered. In the fourth quarter, it plans to launch EV-DO in another 36 metro markets, and by early 2006 the service will be available in 200 urban and suburban markets and broadly deployed in 60 metro regions.

Initially Sprint is launching an access-only business service, fueled by two PC cards from Sierra Wireless and Novatel Wireless. Sprint will offer a 40 MB per month plan for $40 and an unlimited data plan for $80 a month. Starting in the fourth quarter, however, Sprint plans to introduce handsets for both consumer and business customers.

Sprint President and Chief Operating Officer Len Lauer said the EV-DO service is just one of the steps Sprint is taking to deploy a full nationwide wireless data service, pointing to its backwards-compatible nationwide 1X service and its footprint of 19,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. Sprint last week also announced a partnership with Motorola to co-develop Mobile WiMAX technology for its 2.5 GHz spectrum, which could give Sprint a possible fourth wireless access technology to augment its cellular and Wi-Fi portfolio.

“Through network convergence, customers can get all the access solutions they need by harnessing the benefits of Sprint’s diverse wireless networks,” Lauer said in a statement.

Sprint is the third Tier 1 carrier to launch a 3G service in the U.S., Verizon Wireless having beat all carriers to the punch with its nationwide rollout of EV-DO last year. AT&T Wireless also launched six UMTS networks last year, but halted further expansion after its acquisition by Cingular, which has its own plans for a nationwide UMTS rollout augmented by high-speed downlink packet access (HSPDA) technology in 2006.

While Verizon has a formative lead, Sprint’s aggressive rollout will likely put the operator close on Verizon’s heels by early next year. Verizon announced last month that it has 52 markets online with plans to have half the U.S. population, or roughly 150 million people, under its 3G umbrella by the end of the year. With Sprint’s plans for 143 pops covered in early 2006, Sprint will be about even with its larger competitor in terms of overall coverage. From a service side, however, Sprint has to cover a lot of ground. Its first handsets won’t be available until the fourth quarter, giving Verizon an almost one-year lead in the launch of consumer 3G services and also severely limiting business applications Sprint can launch aside from raw broadband access.

While the service has theoretical peak speeds of 2 Mb/s, Sprint claims its EV-DO network can support average downstream throughputs of 400 kb/s to 700 kb/s. Verizon’s network has consistently supported average speeds of 300 kb/s to 500 kb/s.