Xohm The Name Of Sprint's WiMax Network

Well, I guess the proverbial cat has been loosed on this matter, they are starting and entire new service brand for their Internet-based business model that they are now pursuing in place of the telecom-based one. Apparently the name comes from two little facts, first it rhymes with home, second it has an "X" in it which gives it that X factor, and the "ohm" portion of the name I assume gives it that techie/electrical touch which will be needed to lure customers into a service that will likely cost a small fortune at first.

I guess the idea was to unveil their diet pill pyramid scheme while they were at a conference in Reston, VA. The title of the conference is "Sprint Ahead: The Technology Summit" and is going on yesterday as that was the intended release date of such details as the service's name.

Sprint has also partnered with Google to make this $3 billion dollar venture go off, hopefully without a hitch. They also intend on using that partnership to move from being a gateway to the Internet to being more of a destination, or at least a first stop. Another partnership made to help this thing get off the ground was made with Clearwire who agreed to split the network building with Sprint at a 65/35 split with Sprint taking the larger portion.

For those not familiar with the WiMax standard, it was basically supposed to be as fast as WiFi but with ranges closer to that of cell towers, it doesn't look like that's going to happen though, but the speed increase is apparent over 3G. They are saying anywhere from 2-4MB/s price is unknown, but the plan is to have coverage for 100million customers by the end of 2008.

Sprint's new WiMax to be called 'Xohm' [via computerworld]