In March, Sprint Nextel made two simultaneous and — some might argue — contradictory announcements about its broadband wireless strategy.

The US carrier underlined its intention to launch WiMAX this year via a thick swathe of 2.5 GHz spectrum it owns — even going so far as to call it 4G — and expand service into a total of 19 metro areas by 2009.

"Our [WiMAX] modle was never to invalidate cellular; it's really to create a new experience called the mobile internet that is separate from cellular"

Atish Gude, Sprint Nextel

At the same time, it reiterated its commitment to its Pivot joint venture (JV) with cable MSOs (multi-service operators) Advance/Newhouse, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable where it will develop and share 3G technology with a view to launching fixed-mobile converged services.

While Sprint’s decision to call WiMAX 4G ruffled feathers within the 3G camp, its decision to work separately with the cable industry had many industry heads shaking.

"The [Pivot] product is a combination of services that we have available from the existing plants of all the partners," explains Kevin Packingham, vice president of marketing and development at Sprint Nextel. "We have digital phone, video and broadband [from cable] and we brought that together with the wireless products from Sprint. We’re hoping to create a unique customer experience so they’re experiencing wireless as an extension of what they have available in the house."

David Chamberlain, principal analyst-wireless for In-Stat, believes this is a noble goal but one that is not seemingly shared by the cable partners. "I’m not getting warm feelings about this," he says. "Comcast appears lukewarm at best as far as its attitude towards the whole thing. Nothing is going to happen unless the cable companies are actually doing something."

Mike Roudi, vice president of wireless at Time Warner Cable (TWC), speaking during a panel session at CTIA, says that the cable companies are doing something.

TWC is hosting two of the initial JV test markets — in Raleigh, N.C. and Austin — where it is offering rudimentary services, such as a single voice mailbox between wireline and wireless accounts and e-mail that crosses over to the wireless device from the Time Warner Cable broadband service. It’s not, he said, true fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), despite the early promises that the JV would pursue that course — but then again FMC is a difficult thing to define.

"It’s a little less about selling a quad play and more about how we add mobility to the existing platform," says Roudi.

The end game — and the way the JV partners approach it — is in sight, says John Garcia, president of the JV. "We all have a very common view of what convergence is," he says. "The partners all have the same mentality of what we’re trying to do x giving customers access to the things that are already important to them." InStat’s Chamberlain finds the pace disappointing and restricted, especially considering the wealth of unique content cable holds.

"The video component is just not there," he says. "To me that was going to be the key, but nobody is looking at that with any kind of seriousness."

Sprint Nextel’s WiMAX solo act is another indicator that the JV isn’t what it could be and might never be, he adds. "Initially I saw WiMAX as part of this JV and they don’t seem to be converging that. I saw this as a beautiful convergence; we have the WiMAX and now you have broadband in the home, all marketed through the cable companies. It’s low cost for Sprint, low cost for customer acquisition. It looks terrific but I don’t hear anybody saying they want to do that."

Where does WiMAX fit?

Sprint Nextel is building a nationwide WiMAX network that can deliver respectable mobile speeds of 2-4Mbps and up to 5-7Mbps when stationary or portable.

"On some level it will compete with 3G if voice works out well, the data rates and mobility are there, and the pricing is right," says Peter Jarich, principal analyst-wireless infrastructure at Current Analysis. "It will compete with cable if the speeds are there from day one and it’s a device that you actually want and the pricing makes sense." The nationwide WiMAX launch will ultimately cover 100 million points-of-presence (POPs) in every geography with WiMAX blanketing the cities and 3G EV-DO Rev A filling the void in areas outside the WiMAX cloud.

The launch will not initially include mobile voice, which is problematic from both standards and device perspectives. So, initially at least, what Sprint Nextel is proposing sounds like high-speed cable data or DSL — only more convenient and portable. At the very least it would seem to wipe out the mushrooming group of metro Wi-Fi deployments.

To help WiMAX take off, Sprint Nextel is encouraging chipmakers like Intel to aggressively build WiMAX silicon for portable devices, which will go everywhere — literally.

"If it’s in the laptop and it works out really well, then when you come home you may not switch over to your Wi-Fi connection," says Jarich. "It’s too early to tell how these are going to be complementary or competitive, but it’s fairly easy to say on some level they are all going to compete with each other."

Atish Gude, senior vice president of mobile broadband operations at Sprint Nextel, says the carrier is planting both feet in different spaces as it prepares to move forward. "We’re focused on building 3G business today [with the JV] and at the same time we are focused on building our 4G business separate on WiMAX," he says. "Our cable partnership is focused on using the tools and the capabilities that we have available today to prove out and drive that business model."

He continues: "We have a vision about the mobile internet. Our [WiMAX] model was never to invalidate cellular, it’s really to create a new experience called the mobile internet separate from cellular. If I combine it with a home and away package and allow people to experience the internet on multiple electronic devices — really portable electronic devices — having that connectivity to experience the internet is the sweet spot."

Unfaithful partners?

While Sprint Nextel’s growing broadband reach may allow it to keep traffic for itself and not hand it over to its cable operator partners, the cable operators themselves — arguably — are not staying fully within the bounds of its partnership with Sprint Nextel. The JV members bought their own batch of 1.7 GHz spectrum, which, while it could be used for WiMAX, is more likely an entry point into cellular.

Also, there’s been no blanket denial that cable won’t participate in next year’s 700MHz spectrum auction to acquire bandwidth which would be more appropriate for WiMAX. In fact, it would surprise no one if cable wasn’t using Sprint Nextel to learn about wireless before setting out on its own — à la what it did with the @Home Network high-speed data service in the late ‘90s.

"I found it very intriguing when I did get to talk to somebody at Cox, I spoke to their VP of wireless," says InStat’s Chamberlain. "Why does a cable company have a VP of wireless?" Sprint Nextel is also under scrutiny. "People are looking at Sprint; they want to know what Sprint’s up to," says Jarich. "Vendors want to know how to get part of this. Operators want to figure out if they have to compete with them. Other than that, they’re trying to figure out if they’re committed to it [pivot] -- what Sprint is going to do and what they can do."

Jarich believes Sprint is committed to WiMAX. "I have to take them at their word that they’ll build out the networks on the time line, get up some interesting services x at this point because they made so many promises and they repeated it so many times, they’re going to have to have those networks up at the end of the year and go for some new and interesting services," he says.