Sprint Nextel announced that it will call its upcoming WiMAX service “XOHM,” pronounced “zoam,” and went over network and financial details today during the Sprint Ahead Technology Summit.

    The WiMAX initiative will take another $2.5 billion in capex through 2008, the company said, but it should pay off. Sprint execs said they expect to generate between $2 billion and $2.5 billion in revenue by fiscal year 2010, becoming cash-flow positive in 2011. As much as 80 percent of that will be new lines of business.

    A soft launch of the WiMAX network is expected by the end of 2007 in the Chicago and Baltimore/Washington markets, the carrier said, with XOHM commercial services arriving in the first half of 2008.

    The company has been creating an ecosystem of infrastructure vendors, chipmakers and device manufacturers to support WiMAX, which the company said will deliver broadband with speeds up to five times faster than current 3G technologies. Barry West, Sprint’s president of 4G, said those ecosystem partners have committed to embed 50 million WiMAX chipsets in devices.

    Under its planned network sharing agreement with Clearwire Corp., announced last month, the network will reach 100 million people by the end of 2008, with Sprint providing coverage to 70 million and Clearwire to 30 million people. Sprint's coverage is expected to grow to approximately 125 million people by the end of 2010. At that level of buildout, the potential market would include an estimated 48 million U.S. households, nearly 5 million small office/home office subscribers, and more than 130 million consumer electronics devices.

    WiMAX is only one of Sprint’s big initiatives covered at the Technology Summit. Attendees were told that the Pivot fixed-mobile convergence services, which include Sprint wireless services as part of a packaged service offering from joint venture partner cable companies, are now available in 20 markets with plans for at least 40 by year-end. Paul Saleh, Sprint Nextel's CFO, said the company expects meaningful growth in Pivot subscribers over the next 18 months, and that the service is expected to generate new revenue streams through blended services like remote DVR programming and video-on-demand.