Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) has won the contract to build out a WiMax network in France. According to MarketWatch: "Alcatel-Lucent will equip the planned sites in the Ile de France and Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur regions by mid 2009."
The win is nice for Alcatel, but a big secondary winner is Sprint (S). The company is betting a great deal of its future on the WiMax network it plans to have up and running in the US by the end of 2008. The network will cost $3 billion, and is being supported by WiMax champions Intel (INTC) and Motorola (MOT) who have also put money into WiMax IPO Clearwire (CLWR).
The Sprint plan to cover an area that will reach 100 million people in the US has a number of skeptics. WiMax is untried across such a large region. It has been built out in several big cities including Seoul, but whether it can be knitted together to cover a regional that would be a large portion of the US is still open to question.
But, if the French can do it, why can’t Sprint?
Douglas A. McIntyre
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