WiMax

Cash-strapped wireless carrier Sprint may need to tap capital markets or draw on its credit line, investors are warned.

While WiMax has lost the battle to be the 4G technology of choice for most U.S. consumer handsets, it's still alive and kicking in the enterprise market.

Clearwire is outsourcing day-to-day customer care to TeleTech Holdings, shifting about 700 employees to the company, in its latest move to cut costs.

More than 150,000 people are still living in evacuation centers in northern Japan following the massive earthquake and tsunami in March. They have food, warmth and a place to sleep, and now IT companies are helping them reconnect with the world.

With Sprint turning on WiMax 4G service in many cities recently and Verizon launching its LTE-based 4G service over the weekend, some users are reporting much faster than advertised performance. Find out more and share your experience.

Verizon is busy getting ready to turn its 4G/LTE network on for consumers while Sprint is aggressively adding more cities to its existing 4G/WiMax service. Beyond the technology and location, the big differences come down to the potential speed of service and the option of unlimited data for a flat rate.

Late last week, a report emerged that compared the iPad's network performance to other devices using WiMax 4G devices and got surprising results - the iPad was almost half as slow using Wi-Fi to 4G connections, but just as fast using Wi-Fi with a hard link or 3G. Is it intentional or a design flaw that's only just been discovered?

All major U.S. carriers have announced 4G plans and some are already offering 4G service and devices. However, the ITU's recently issued definition of what constitutes 4G excludes all of them (as well as all "4G" technology available worldwide). Here's a rundown of what 4G means according to the ITU and carriers and what it will mean for consumers over the next few years.

Since the wireless industry can't yet agree on a single definition for the term "4G," it should be no surprise that the 4G World show in Chicago this week saw top service providers deliver mixed messages about what consumers might be able to expect from the "fourth generation" of cellular services over the next year. But one thing is clear: We're a lot closer to enjoying the faster speeds of the new networks than we were a year ago, and the advance of the technology is picking up speed.

When smartphones came into wide use for Internet access and data transmission, consumers and carriers quickly recognized the need for faster, more reliable wireless data networks with broader geographical coverage. The current mobile telecommunications technologies, collectively known as 3G, for third generation, emerged about 10 years ago. At long last, successor technologies are now entering commercial service. The whole idea behind 4G is that it will offer very fast, widely available broadband.

Yes, it was only a demonstration. Even so, Samsung's trial of WiMAX 2 technology that touched speeds of 330Mbps is impressive.

While LTE starts rolling out from major US carriers in 2011, the WiMAX Forum is hoping to have the so-called "WiMAX 2" standard up and ready to go by the start of 2012.