Right as it leaves the starting gate, there might already be a bit of controversy surrounding Sprint’s 4G WiMax offering, XOHM.
Silicon Valley Insider did a bit of digging through the XOHM policy agreement, and came across this little gem:
“To ensure a high-quality experience for its entire subscriber base, XOHM may use various tools and techniques designed to limit the bandwidth available for certain bandwidth intensive applications or protocols, such as file sharing.”
Looks like Sprint is giving themselves a bit of leeway to keep any bandwidth hungry protocols — such as BitTorrent, or Skype — from clogging up the pipes. Sorry Sprint – Comcast tried it, and you just can’t do that. No one likes it when a few people bog down the network for everyone else, but no one wants service providers quietly limiting the performance of their favorite applications, either.
Be it that the FCC gets wind of this and holds true to their previous decisions, Sprint may have to change their game plan. If they follow in Comcast’s foot steps, this may mean bandwidth chokes for the heaviest users.