Sprint beats Verizon and AT&T with Managed WWAN Access
Sprint announced a $99/month business service for Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) using a Cisco HWIC card, now available via its business sales channels. The Cisco HWIC card featuring a cdma2000 modem with EV-DO Rev. A fits into the HWIC slots of Cisco 1800, 2800, and 3800 series routers. These routers provide automatic failover between the WAN and WWAN interfaces. This is great for business customers looking for reduced costs, faster-to-market connectivity, portable connectivity, or secure business continuity. For example, a branch office with DSL or other WAN connection can use the EV-DO based Wireless connectivity as a backup for business continuity. Or, the broadband wireless connectivity can be the primary network connection at temporary points of sale, seasonal work centers, disaster recovery centers, business kiosks, construction sites, conventions/events/trade shows, portable or temporary offices, or even at a movie shooting site, where Wireless WAN service can be setup quickly rather than wait for installation of wired connectivity.
Sprint’s WWAN service comes with the choice of connecting to a business’ own Multiple Protocol Label Switched (MPLS) VPN network via Sprint’s Data Link network, or connect through the Internet. With Sprint Managed Services, the business customer has a choice of a fully integrated wireless and wireline solution to support their IP/MPLS networking needs. Sprint’s EV-DO Rev. A network supports downloads of 600Kbps to 1.4 Mbps, and uplink speeds of 300 - 500 Kbps. The Cisco HWIC is backward compatible with EV-DO Rev. 0 and 1XRTT when Rev. A is unavailable.
AT&T and Verizon Wireless offer PCMCIA and router based wireless broadband service, but haven’t launched the Managed Services and Wireline/wireless integrated MPLS connectivity that Sprint provides. When it comes to attracting and retaining business customers, Sprint has clearly made the first move, and will enjoy that advantage till AT&T and Verizon get their acts together.
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JustinLane:
Rev A is rated 3.1Mbps losers do some research before writing an article next time.
12 July 2007, 9:54 pmSenaka Balasuriya:
@JustinLane: It’s pretty clear you don’t know what you are talking about. The numbers specified in the article are average numbers or rather, real-world numbers (assumes certain loading factors, signal strength, etc). Here’s an article from Sprint itself (somewhat dated) that talks about even lower bandwidth for EV-DO Rev A http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=13980
I’m not sure who fed you the 3.1Mbps number, but that’s the theoretical maximum for a sector. That number will almost never be seen in real life unless 1) the AT is right next to the transmitter and 2) there’s no other AT in the whole sector.
One could figure this out with a simple test - just get a EV-DO Rev A PCMCIA card, connect it to a laptop and see what kind of speeds you get.
12 July 2007, 11:32 pm