Bloggers test mobile WiMax in US

Now that Sprint's XOHM network is up and running, hacks and bloggers got invited to Baltimore (now 70 percent covered in WiMax-y goodness) to check it out and test it out.

The jkOnTheRun website has an interesting roundup of the event. It seems the laptop manufacturers are raring to go - Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Toshiba all have mobile-WiMax-ready notebooks out there now, and Panasonic, Dell, Samsung and Sony are set to join the party next year.

One interesting thing about WiMax, especially compared to its archrival HSxPA, is that it doesn't require a SIM card or, by extension, a phone number. It uses the MAC address of the client device as an identifier instead. Sadly, it seems the hacks weren't shown an activation in, er, action. Nonetheless, they did get taken on a drive to see how well it coped with the rigours of travel. From jkOnTheRun:

Overall, the speeds were impressively high and the latency was relatively low when compared to my current EV-DO Rev. A solution. I witnessed download speeds over 5 Mbps with uploads over 2 Mbps. Latency was in the 70 to 100 ms range.

The authors noticed occasional blips, but nothing serious. So, all good then! How well such technology fares over here, of course, is another matter, seeing as we have much better super-3G services in Blighty. That 2.6GHz auction is supposed to take place this year, but prolonged legal action from T-Mobile and O2 is making that look increasingly unlikely...

We shall see...