Hands-on with Sprint's Xohm network in Baltimore: Does WiMAX deliver?

The verdict on quality of service

Of course, lower prices don't mean much if the service doesn't deliver, and this is where we were most skeptical. Those of you who have used city-wide or other public Wi-Fi networks before know how unreliable and slow the connectivity can be. Can WiMax really provide stable Internet faster than 3G while on the go, or penetrate the walls of a concrete loft to offer a viable alternative to Comcast?

Much to our astonishment, the answer is a definitive yes.

We placed the Zyxel WiMax modem in a nook, surrounded by concrete walls and atop other wireless and electronic gear, not by a window as was recommended. Within a minute, the modem booted up and locked on 2 out of 3 bars of signal. Less than a minute later, it was showing full signal and remained that way since. That's vastly superior to Verizon and AT&T 3G signal at the same location.

Latency (as measured in ping times) to the BetaNews server was in the 80ms to 100ms range, which is over 50% better than the latency on Verizon's EV-DO network, but well slower than the 20ms we see on Comcast's wireline network. At first, websites were sluggish to load, but we narrowed down the problem to Sprint's DNS servers; after switching to OpenDNS, the Internet was nearly as snappy as with Comcast.

Visitors who were accessing the Xohm connection unsuspectingly said they didn't notice any difference from Comcast when using e-mail, IM and browsing the Web. If you're downloading a large file like a movie from iTunes, it may be useful to have 20Mbps downstream, but Xohm proved perfectly acceptable for most Internet tasks.

Download speeds on Xohm generally ranged between 2Mbps and 4Mbps. Upload speeds were a big surprise, at times hitting upwards of 2Mbps (Xohm only promises 500kbps). View a comparison of speed tests below.

We have yet to experience any major outages with Xohm, although we've had to reboot the Zyxel modem once and connectivity stalled briefly a couple times over the past month. Ironically, Xohm has recently proven to be even more stable than Comcast, which has had a few hour-long outages in the past week.

But how does Xohm perform outside of the home? We took the Samsung SWC-E100 WiMax ExpressCard for a drive around Baltimore to gauge its speed and reliability (with a Windows laptop as Mac OS X is still unsupported, a major downside). Although the laptop card has much smaller antenna, being outdoors or near a window at a coffee shop generally yielded full signal -- except where Xohm hasn't finished the network.

Because WiMax is still being deployed around Baltimore, there are gaps in coverage where the signal fades completely. The company said it is working to resolve these dead zones, and around the major neighborhoods of the city, they were few and far between. In the meantime, Sprint is planning a multi-mode card before the end of the year that will be able to switch to the company's 3G EV-DO network when WiMax isn't available. It's not clear, however, if the 3G connectivity will be included free with the Xohm service or require a separate plan.

"It will take a while to have this new network ubiquitous," acknowledged Sprint CEO Hesse during the launch event. The company also needs money: Xohm/Clearwire has raised $3.2 billion, but it needs another $2 billion to complete its planned network deployments. In a sagging economy, it may be difficult to find investors eager to back a technology that is far from a sure thing, especially while other cellular providers are pushing for an alternative 4G technology known as Long Term Evoloution, or LTE.

It's a situation reminiscent of HD DVD vs. Blu-ray. AT&T, T-Mobile, Alltel, Verizon, Telus, Bell Mobility, and wireless giant Vodafone have all put their support behind LTE, which is seen as an evolution to GSM-based 3G HSPA. Meanwhile, Sprint and 522 other companies (many of them small) make up the WiMax Forum. Motorola is hedging its bets by supporting both standards.

Although LTE has the potential for faster throughput and could be more quickly deployed on existing cellular towers, Xohm CTO West notes that it's still years off.

"What do our competitors answer with? Nothing," said West. "Nothing is available for two years. We are the only company with all the resources to do this. Our spectrum licenses cover half the world population."

Then again, HD DVD was first to the table with a completed standard, but Blu-ray had the Hollywood studios just as LTE has the majority of wireless carriers behind it.

To counter this problem, devices have become critical to the success of WiMax. Intel has already built WiMax capabilities into its new Centrino 2 platform, and 8 laptops (from Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba and Asus) currently support the technology. The plan is to make WiMax as commonly integrated as Wi-Fi, and Intel has developed a single embedded chip to handle both. By the time the network coverage is more substantial, many consumers will already have capable devices.

And this is how Xohm and Clearwire plan to get consumers on board the WiMax revolution: simplicity. "It's like Wi-Fi," summed up West with a statement that is sure to become a marketing catchphrase in the coming year.

Editor's Note: Although the technology is officially spelled WiMAX, we decided not to overload you with extra capital letters. We hope you understand this was not an oversight.