Abhishek Tiwari

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Sprint for past year or so has been chasing the WiMax carrot. The carrier has been facing huge subscriber churn issues since its merger with Nextel. Many think that WiMax would be its savior. WiMax is a key wireless technology, which will allow true broadband speeds (in multiple mbps) to be delivered over the air. The technology is critical as it will enable further reach than typical cable or DSL infrastructures.

Sprint who is spending billions in the WiMax network officially announced its brand name yesterday. They will launch this service as “XOHM” (pronounced as zoam). The website went online late last night with basic service information.

So why should you as a consumer care? How does this impact you? Let’s look at some of the elements of this service, which will potentially have some social impacts.

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Verizon Wireless as you know has been one of the big boys of the wireless sector here in North America. Along with AT&T and Sprint they continue to dominate the North American market. However for quite some time they have been known as the slow poke of the wireless world, always trailing Sprint or AT&T in adopting new services. Focusing more on their network rather than bringing new services to their end users. I am sure you all have seen those goofy “Can you hear me now?” campaigns.

However today marks the arrival of a newer, fresher Verizon when they announced release of Mobile Web 2.0. All this started late last year when they announced a key deal with YouTube. Since then VZW has been gradually improving its mobile offering to become the best in the North American market.

Through the Mobile Web 2.0 offering VZW will bring the following key features to bear:

• New Content Channels — Local, Connect, Tools, Commute, and Money give customers more options
• New Search functionality — Allows both keyword and local search, enabling customers to easily discover sites and content of local interest
• Improved graphics — Tabbed graphics, top headlines with photo links and refined features improve cursor discovery and location
• Dropdown headlines — Allow customers to select up to seven headlines, for faster access to articles — 10 Button Navigation — Improved navigation and menu structure provides customers with more options on each page

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Carnival of Mobilists is a collection of web’s best posts for the week around mobility and wireless. This week the carnival is hosted on Mobile Messaging 2.0 (one of my favorites).

My post about the Free Ad based Mobile Service has been featured on the blog as one of the interesting posts in the “Carrier/Operator News”. Check it out.

Thanks to Debi for selecting the post and adding this link.

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Most of you know about the FCC auction of 700 MHZ spectrum. I covered it in a previous post. Google had thrown the gauntlet in the game and asked FCC to include following conditions in the auction rules:

• Open Apps
• Open Devices
• Open Services
• Open Networks

They backed up the request with $4.6 Billion cash. These rules would have really allowed other players to get into the market and offer services, which would loosen the stong-hold by the big boys. This would have been a great win for the consumer.

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The ad based free mobile service concept isn’t new. It has been discussed on Tech/wireless blogs, Business 2.0 columns and in tech conferences. Virgin Mobile USA also decided to jump into this by offering their Sugar Mama service. However Virgin’s service isn’t as seamless as everyone imagined.

Enter Mosh Mobile, the mobile MVNO service which is in Beta right now. Yes you heard me right, its in Beta. Very novel concept for a MVNO. Not only that, it is also restricting access to only a chosen few (kinda like early days of GMail). The site boldly states “you gotta know someone to be someone”. These guys continue the edgy theme popularized by Boost and the late Amp’d. They havent announced who is the base carrier. My speculation is that the carrier is Sprint. I am basing it on the fact that Mosh’s site states that users must dial *2 on their phones for customer support, which is standard on any Sprint phone.

Let’s talk features. The guys at Mosh Mobile are going whole hog with this offering. They intend to offer the whole enchilada in just One plan. The language reminded me of Steve Job’s presentation of Leopard’s pricing (comparing to 1000 price options for Vista). Again the service says, “We only offer one plan… who needs more… when the one you have kicks ass?”. Nice…

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