Barry West, Sprint’s chief over its high-speed wireless WiMax initiative, said the service finally would launch in Baltimore in September.


"Mobile WiMAX services will follow in the Washington DC and Chicago markets during Q4 2008," West said, according to a report in telecoms.com. "We're already looking at other markets to launch after that."

West’s comments came in his keynote address this week at the WiMAX Forum Global Congress in Amsterdam.

Sprint initially intended to launch these fourth-generation wireless services this past spring. The company encountered, however, a variety of obstacles that included a lack of infrastructure known as backhaul and delays in setting up back-office systems to handle billing and other tasks.

"I'm probably two months behind where I thought I would be [on the back-office] but we are testing the software now [primarily from Amdocs] and we are very pleased with it,” West said according to the telecoms report. “We can now activate a device over the air under five minutes and set up a billing relationship with the customer."

These launches are moving forward even as Sprint moves ahead with merging its WiMax unit with Clearwire Corp.

The companies have lined up more than $3 billion in backing from partners such as Intel Corporation, Google Inc., Comcast Corporation, Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks.

Clearwire’s leaders have giant-sized ambitions. They recently said the combined company would have nearly 31 million customers by 2017.

The venture is a key part of Sprint’s strategy for countering rivals such as AT&T and Verizon, West told xChange magazine.

“Sprint will now have access to both 3G and 4G services to compete with AT&T and Verizon and we’ll definitely have a distinct advantage over satellite,” he said. “Plus, Sprint makes money out of the investment as well. [Sprint took a 51 percent ownership stake in the new company].”