Sprint to Provide Wimax to 100 Million People

Sprint has just announced 20 of the lucky cities that will be provided free WiMAX by the end of 2008. To those of us (about 1/3 of the U.S.) that live in these cities, this is an amazing development. This, along with the proliferation of inexpensive computers, should do wonders to shrink the digital divide in these major urban population centers.

Ever since Sprint promised to blanket 100 million people with WiMAX by the end of 2008, we've been wondering just who exactly those people would be. Well, in addition to a few other specifics, Sprint is finally coming clean about nineteen of those markets.

The promised cities are as follows: Motorola is prepping service for Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis; Samsung will develop Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Washington D.C.; and Nokia will work on Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Seattle. There'll be more location info to come, but that should get us started nicely. Sprint is still promising the limited initial launch by the end of 2007, and that 100 million target for the 2008, but also has an April '08 goal for launching a "number" of markets.

Kudos to Sprint, Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia for getting this project off the ground. Additional Kudos to Engadget for spreading the good word.