Yesterday at the Bond Street Wharf Park, Sprint Nextel made an official announcement that their WiMax service with partner Clearwire, Xohm, will go live in Baltimore on October 8th.  They also confirmed that Chicago and Washington D.C. would be the next cities to join in on the next generation of mobile broadband. Intel will be a major sponsor, along with Motorola, Nokia, Nokia-Siemens Networks, Samsung, ZTE and ZyXEL. Technology partners also include Ciena, DragonWave, Mformation and others. There are location-based services partners as well.

“Backhaul is a key focus area for us as we build out the Xohm network,” said Doug Smith, senior vice president and chief technical operations officer of Sprint’s Xohm business unit in a prepared statement. “A next-generation, Ethernet-based architecture can optimize efficiency and give us backhaul cost advantages. Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet platforms offer performance, scalability and simplified traffic engineering to expedite deployment and accommodate growth demands.”

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