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In advance of its WiMAX rollout this fall, Sprint announced Thursday a lineup of mobile partners to localize its customer’s 4G experience. In what the company calls “geobrowsing,” XOHM users will get local news, weather and many other localized networking features delivered to their laptops and mobile devices.

The WiMAX service is expected to kick off in Baltimore in September, with Chicago and Washington, D.C., to follow before the end of the year.

Location, Location, Location

GPS in the XOHM system continually updates the user’s position and feeds it to back-end applications. This feature is added by California-based Open Wave. Using uLocate as the foundation for the service, Sprint has tested and implemented a number of applications before rollout.

The partnership between Sprint and uLocate includes building the entire XOHM localized experience, with APIs provided to third-party developers for their applications. Some big names will be part of the launch.

Yelp will provide local business news all the way through local restaurant reviews. Eventful service will not only list events for XOHM users but will also map the locations. NAVTEQ will stream up-to-the-minute local traffic information, while Google will serve up localized searching and map features.

John Polivka, spokesperson at Sprint, explained the difference between the XOHM user experience and using the Internet. “With Internet access you could go to each vendor now as a separate interaction; but with XOHM, the services are aggregated into a service package that correlates them due to the intelligence in the network; for example, plotting friend locations on a map, identifying a restaurant or entertainment venue from local search, and sharing plans to convene with the benefit of weather, traffic or ticket-purchase convenience.”

XOHM users will have standard Internet as well. Polivka noted that there is no charge for third-party developers to become part of the program, but there would be…

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