At a ceremony Friday in Baltimore, officials from Sprint Nextel celebrated the official launch of the company's XOHM WiMAX service by literally cutting a cord -- they sliced through some Cat-5 wire with pruning shears to mark the end of the wired Internet.

"4G has rapidly gone from a mobility vision to service reality with the launch of XOHM service in Baltimore," said Barry West, XOHM's president. "Nothing has ignited the imagination of a cross section of industries and the partnership of an ecosystem the way WiMAX technology has. We are delighted with the reception we have received."

Can You Ping Me Now?

Although XOHM, Sprint's 4G business unit, has aggressive plans for nationwide WiMAX, the actual implementation may take some time. John Polivka, a spokesperson for Sprint/Nextel/XOHM, said that not every corner of Baltimore can receive WiMAX just yet.

"About 70 percent of the city has coverage, and we continue to work on expanding it," Polivka said. "There are 180 base stations operating, and the target at end of build out is about 300." Polivka did not say how long it might be before the build out was complete.

Long-term, XOHM hopes to roll out enough of its national network to make WiMAX available to as many as 140 million people by the end of 2010. Executives said that financing is in place to provide approximately $3.2 billion of the $5 billion needed for the build out, and expressed confidence that despite the ongoing economic problems, the remaining $1.8 billion would be available.

Polivka said that the next networks are already being built. "We continue to make the network ready in Chicago and Washington D.C., but haven't identified launch timelines," he said. "They may be announced by the new Clearwire management, as that merger with Sprint's XOHM business unit is expected to close within the fourth quarter, after all regulatory and other approvals happen."

Other cities in the construction pipeline include Boston, Providence, Philadelphia, Dallas and Ft. Worth.

WiMAX-Ready Equipment Increasingly Available

The introduction of a new network-transmission protocol inevitably raises the chicken-and-egg issue: Who's going to manufacture and sell hardware to access a network that doesn't exist? But as the promised rollout of XOHM's WiMAX grew closer, a variety of vendors began introducing WiMAX equipment.

Currently, four manufacturers offer laptops with built-in WiMAX capabilities: Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba. The WiMAX chipset adds about $60 to the price of each machine. In addition, a variety of plug-in WiMAX cards are available, along with a handful of WiMAX routers for home use.

At the event in Baltimore, XOHM CEO Barry West predicted that at least a dozen laptops will be equipped with built-in WiMAX by the end of December.