MuniWireless

After all the doubts, deals and delays, the biggest launch of WiMax services in the U.S. will become official on Oct. 8, when Intel, Sprint, Clearwire and others host a WiMax celebration/demonstration in Baltimore, whose residents will be the first to test Sprint’s Xohm WiMax services.

The official press invite just crossed our email inbox, and it still says “COME CELEBRATE THE DAWN OF 4G WITH THE SEPTEMBER LAUNCH OF XOHM AND ITS MOBILE WIMAX NETWORK IN BALTIMORE,” which leads us…

The always-reliable Karl Bode over at DSL Reports is quoting a tipster who is putting the official Xohm Baltimore launch on Oct. 6, which doesn’t quite meet Barry West’s September deadline but maybe that’s just a quibble.

Given all the optimism from the Sprint side of things, we had been expecting to hear some official news soon, if not this week than probably early next since it’s almost impossible to keep these things under wraps forever. More news, including official announcements,…

As promised, here is our extended interview from last week’s phone conversation with Xohm president Barry West, Sprint’s point man on all things WiMax. In this edited transcript West talks about three new markets where Sprint is already building tower sites, as well as the problems Apple’s iPhone 3G users seem to be experiencing (which didn’t surprise him). West also talks about the progress in the Clearwire-Sprint WiMax merger, the devices in the Xohm pipeline and the new network’s open…

They’re whoopin’ it up at Sprint headquarters, as the Xohm WiMax folks there celebrate hitting an internal infrastructure deployment date well ahead of schedule. A confident and happy Xohm president Barry West spoke with us by phone Thursday afternoon for an update on the inaugural Xohm launch in Baltimore in September, as well as device, bandwidth and spectrum issues for both Sprint’s solo launches in 2008 and the expected merged operations in the New Clearwire for 2009.

According to West, the…

We’re not sure yet if the Intel sport-utes will be in the house, but we have confirmed that Clearwire will have a live, working Mobile WiMax demo during the upcoming CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment show in San Francisco, Sept. 10-12.

The mini-WiMax network demo should help kick off a big month for WiMax in the U.S., with the promised launch of Sprint’s Xohm services in Baltimore and the big WiMax World show in Chicago at the end of the month.…