Xohm: No Long-Term Commitments Besides Baltimore Residency

Among the announcements forgotten for a moment amid the shrieks of agony and general keening on Wall Street today, this one from Sprint Nextel heralding a single-market launch of Xohm, its new WiMax wireless service. The company lit up only Xohm in Baltimore today, fulfilling its promise to have the service up and running by the end of September. That said, it’s still nearly a year late.

Still, it sounds promising. With downlink speeds in the 2-4Mbps range, Xohm is about twice as fast as current cellular broadband networks. Sprint’s service plans include a $25 monthly home subscription, a $30 “on-the-go” plan and a $10 day-pass program. All three require a PC card or modem and a subscriber agreement permitting Xohm to “use various tools and techniques designed to limit the bandwidth available for certain bandwidth-intensive applications or protocols, such as file sharing.”

So much for that “open network” promise. Well, at least Xohm is up and running, right? Sprint Nextel (S) first announced plans to deploy a nationwide WiMax network in August 2006.