Sprint: WiMAX support will continue through 2012, ‘nothing to announce’ beyond that

Though Sprint is pushing hard on its just-announced LTE rollout, there are already plenty of WiMAX devices in the company’s hardware portfolio - and to that end, CEO Dan Hesse and his executives are assuring that WiMAX support will continue in full through 2012. Beyond that, the picture is a little murkier - the company doesn’t have an active agreement in place with Clearwire, but Hesse isn’t yet saying exactly how (or if) WiMAX will ultimately be phased out. For its part, Clearwire - which Sprint has invested heavily in over the years - has announced that it’ll be rolling out TD-LTE in its spectrum holdings, but that deployment doesn’t factor into Sprint’s LTE plans at this point.