Samsung Electronics has launched a marketing campaign for its wireless network business in the United States, a month before the opening of the first Mobile WiMax service in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

The company said Tuesday that it started a promotion with Sprint Nextel, the service provider, at an annual expo of the Cellular Telecommunication Industry Association (CITA) being held in Las Vegas this week.

Models show Samsung Electronics' Mobile WiMax devices at the Cellular Telecommunication Industry Association's exposition being held at the Las Vegas Convention Center Monday. Samsung is providing network equipment for the wireless Internet platform to Sprint Nextel. / Yonhap

Mobile WiMax is a wireless network platform that provides high-speed Internet access even inside fast-moving cars and trains, just as people use mobile phones on the road. It is called WiBro (Wireless Broadband) in South Korea.

Samsung is a major backer of this technology, and it is selling network equipment to Sprint, which is building the next-generation network in the eastern part of the United States under the brand name of XOHM.

``In the future, we will cooperate with Sprint more closely to make Mobile WiMax successfully settle in the United States and expand into the global market,'' said Choi Gee-sung, president of Samsung's telecommunications and network (TN) division.

Choi's TN division is the world's second largest mobile phone maker. While taking most of its profit from the phone sales, the division has been investing in various next-generation technologies such as Mobile WiMax.

Samsung is providing platforms for Sprint's XOHM in New York, Washington, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Providence. At the expo, it is also displaying a WiMax-capable mini PC called Q1 Ultra Premium as well as a PC-card type.

There have been two contradictory opinions on Mobile WiMax platforms. In the United States, Sprint had planned to spend $5 billion setting up the WiMax network by 2010 in a partnership with Clearwire. But due to technical and financial uncertainties, the project has been scaled down several times.

In Korea, expectations on the market potential of the new service have been lowered, too. Though KT, the network giant, is expanding the coverage from the Seoul metropolitan area to other cities this year, the number of WiMax subscribers was only around 120,000 by February.

There has been even more blatant criticism of WiMax. According to a Dow Jones report, the CEO of Buzz Broadband, an Australian WiMAX operator, criticized the technology as a ``miserable failure.'' Garth Freeman pointed out that the WiMax coverage has a shorter reach from base stations and performs poorly indoors.

[www.koreatimes.co.kr]