Following the rollout of WiMax service in Pennsylvania this week, Sprint and Clearwire have jointly announced the further expansion of service to more markets in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest, Northeast, Southeast and California during this summer.
Residents in n Nashville, TN.; Daytona, Orlando and Tampa, FL.; Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.; Merced, Modesto, Stockton, and Visalia, CA.; Wilmington, DE.; Grand Rapids, MI.; Eugene, OR; along with Yakima and the Tri-Cities of Washington State will be the next markets to benefit from WiMax under both the Clear and Sprint 4G brands.
This is great news. I’m always in Orlando. I guess I’ll be switching my sero over to everything so I can get the evo. Unless windows phone 7 comes out with a 4g phone. I guess we will see.
Honestly, JJ, I sincerely doubt that Windows Phone 7 handsets will be allowed on SERO. I’d love to be wrong, but I honestly think that the Touch Pro 2 is going to be the last smart phone allowed on SERO given Sprint’s attempts to phase the plan out.
I actually spoke with an agent from corporate and they said that all windows phones will always work on sero. He said that windows phones are attached to the sero. Plus if sprint also took windows phones from sero they would probably have a lot of complaints coming at end of year.
JJ, there’s a difference between Windows Phone 7, and Windows Mobile 6.5 and earlier.
I will echo the statements of many, don’t expect WP7 to work on SERO. At the same time though, since WP7 isn’t on the market, it really doesn’t affect your plan choice right now anyways.
Still no Los Angeles!
Thank You
I guess we will see once they release a windows phone 7 phone. Lets hope they allow it or out of my 4 lines with sprint only 1 will remain will sprint. The other lines will become pay as you go. Probably the new virgin mobile plans or maybe straigthtalk. I’m still deciding.
@Christoper-How do you know that sprint won’t allow windows 7 phones on sero besides the fact that webos and android arent allowed?
I actually believe the sprint executive who I spoke with because windows 6.1 was updated to windows 6.5 and they still allowed it. I think it will be the same when they upgrade to windows phone 7. Plus it was an executive from corporate office and not a customer service agent.
oh well. I guess we will see in a couple of months.
“I actually believe the sprint executive who I spoke with because windows 6.1 was updated to windows 6.5 and they still allowed it. I think it will be the same when they upgrade to windows phone 7.”
However, no current phones are (technically) able to be upgraded from WinMo 6.5 to Windows Phone 7 so I’m not getting the correlation that you’re attempting to draw.
@F1 Los Angeles has already been announced for 2010. You’ll just have to be patient for a bit longer…
http://newsroom.clearwire.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=214419&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1404906&highlight=
I know they can’t upgrade to windows 7 but they are still windows and the sero plan as the executive told me is attached to the sero plan and will be the only smartphone allowed on the plan.
But like always, you can’t believe anything until it actually happens.
I will ride out the sero plan till the end and hopefull there won’t be an end and windows phone 7 is allowed. “crossing my fingers”
Fixing previous post:
“sero plan is attached to windows”
@ DP
Much appreciated, well at least it is finally on the map, third quarter perhaps?
Thank You
So are they saying these cities will be the next cities to get working Wimax, or are they just adding more cities to the expansion list?
@ JJ
There is no way Win Phone 7 will work on SERO. SERO worked with all phones and OS when it was launched. Once Sprint decided they wanted to kill it, it didn’t work with any new OS. I’m sure it will work with the old Windows Mobile OS phones. Those are probably the phones your rep was talking about. But the new Windows Phone OS that has yet to actually be released, will be treated like Android and WebOS.
You can use old Palm devices on SERO, but not the new WEBOS devices. And you will likely be able to use old Windows Mobile devices, but not the new Win Phone 7 devices.
Anyway, if you have 4 SERO lines, the EPRP might be cheaper anyway (for the family plan). 2 lines on the EPRP Data Family plan is $110, with additional lines being $15 each. That includes 1600 anytime minutes, unlimited messaging, unlimited data (on any phone you want), unlimited Sprint navigation, Sprint TV and Radio, and Nascar Mobile. It also has the Any Mobile Anytime- giving you unlimited calls to all cell phones on any network. So I don’t know which SERO plans you have, but that can’t be too much more…
Other WiMAX deployment dates are not affected by this announcement. These are new cities that will be getting Clear 4G in addition to prior announcements.
@sawlty
I know about the everything plus plan. I just haven’t switched to it because 2 of the lines are under a different name and I will have to do a transfer of liability. If I were to get the family plan it would only be around $5 extra a month per line not including taxes, which is a great deal. But I will ride it out and see what happens.
At this point the tv or navigation don’t interest me and the any mobile anytime is not going to help me since I’m not going over my minutes anyway, plus I have any 3 numbers on all the lines.
I will wait till everything is laid at the end of the year. All my lines are eligible for the $150 and no longer under contract so if its true and the sero won’t allow win7pho and sprint doesn’t give me another option then I will take 3 of the lines to prepay and keep my line on Sero and just deal with it. Plus, prepay plans are getting better and better and I’m the only one out of the 4 lines who wants a smarthphone so I will just stick with my tp2 as long as I can. I just don’t like being forced to pay extra for a phone that uses the same data as mine.
Thanks for the input though. We will see how everything turns out to be.
Its probably only my satisfaction but if sero won’t allow win7pho I have the direct line to that executive and you can bet i’ll be giving him a call if thats the case. he he
I know Tallahassee isn’t one of the Top 100 metros but with the exception of Pensacola every major city in Florida would be covered this summer. Any insight into the status of the Panhandle expansion?
@ JJ
Win Phone 7 sucks anyway, you’ll probably hate it. Have you been following it?
No 3rd party UI (no SPB Mobile Shell, no HTC Sense, etc)
Can only install apps from the app store (no more XDA and PPC Geeks cabs)
No SD cards, only storage that is built into the phone
No multi tasking
No copy and paste
No replacing native apps (IE has to always be default browser, etc)
No 3rd party on screen keyboards
I am not even considering Win Phone 7 at this point. It’s bad enough Microsoft totally abandonded all of their loyal customers, but Win Phone 7 actually sucks even if Microsoft had stood by their customers.
@salty
I agree with you 100%. I hate winmo and winpho7 looks like crap as of now. But I was just looking to try it and keep my sero plan since I can’t get android or webos.
I will probably switch to the 69.99 plan since I get a discount from my employer but I’m just really hesitant to get rid of my $30 plan. If the evo is as good as they say then I will probably switch.
I’m just trying to keep the sero as long as I can.
At this point though android has microsoft beat 10 fold. Their just really sucking it up.
Will 4g Towers be backwards compatible with 3g? That would be awesome since rumor has it sprint will have a 4g tower on almost all walmart locations. Even if you don’t have a 4g phone those with 3g will benefit from it especially since most people with sprint have horrible service inside buildings like walmart.
JJ, the “Walmart WiMAX rumors” are pretty bogus. Walmart has been talking about various tower colocation arrangements, but it really boils down to if there’s a fit in each area. Most Walmart stores have adequate coverage by a nearby tower to begin with.
The question of “4G Towers” isn’t a good starting point. Basically, if a Mobile WiMAX signal makes sense on a cell site where Sprint is already selling service… they’ll deploy WiMAX on the tower. WiMAX and CDMA have different penetration levels and breathing effects.
As such, it doesn’t make sense to put a WiMAX base station where each CDMA base station exists. There will be some place it does, and some places that it doesn’t.
Finally, Yakima is on the list. They kept promising me soon…soon…it will be soon.