Sprint shows off 4G to Wi-Fi Routers

By now most of us know that Sprint is the first US carrier to roll out any sort of 4G network through WiMAX. Even if you didn’t know, just seeing any Sprint ad will remind you of the fact. It’s all a great idea if you live in the select cities that already have it, or were chosen the next location for the WiMAX roll out. The connection is a bit useless, however, if you have no devices capable to connecting to the network.

To remedy this situation, Sprint is putting out two WiMAX to Wi-Fi routers. They come in two varieties, a large router that’s unlikely to leave the house, and a small pocket-sized version. The house version is called the Cradlepoint MBR1000, and will be able to take any Sprint wireless card or modem, and output that signal into either an 802.11g or 802.11n Wi-Fi signal. The Cradlepoint can support up to 32 devices on just one router. The smaller version, the PHS300S Personal Hotspot, is more like a MIFI device. It fits in your pocket, and created a wireless g network from any USB modem.

These devices are nice, though for most of the country they are useless at the moment. As Sprint rolls out WiMAX in more and more cities it will be more useful, if you really want to connect a computer of other Wi-Fi only device to the network. I can see these working well for those with netbooks or iPod touches that have only Wi-Fi and no network cards. The network, which can give up to 3 Mbps connections might not be the sort of thing you want to use to substitute any other connection for. It’s a great choice for cell phones, but attaching a lot of personal devices to the network just seems like it could be frustrating.

Read [Electronista]