Court orders Sprint to keep WiMax network running for 90 days

A Massachusetts judge has delayed Sprint’s plan to shut down its WiMax network this week, according to nonprofit groups that sought the order.

The order extends the life of Sprint’s legacy WiMax network in some areas for 90 days, the groups said. This will provide the nonprofit Internet access providers, doing business as Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen, time to migrate their services’ users to Sprint’s LTE network.

Sprint’s LTE network, which uses Long Term Evolution technology instead of the older WiMax technology, is a faster and more widely available mobile network. Sprint had announced its plans to shut off WiMax service as of Friday.

Overland Park-based Sprint had complained that the suing nonprofits simply had a contract dispute with Sprint and that others similarly situated already had migrated to LTE.

In an email, a Sprint spokeswoman said the company disagreed with the ruling but would delay shutting down WiMax “where it could affect current Mobile Beacon and Mobile Citizen customers.”

It also said, “We plan to continue to protect our rights in this contract dispute and expect to prevail on the merits. This contract dispute and the decision do not affect our retail customers.”

Each side expressed hope of working with the other to transition users to the LTE network.

The nonprofits sued and declared that 300,000 mostly low-income consumers would lose their low-price access to the Internet that the nonprofits provided using WiMax. Moving to the LTE network would require users to switch to mobile devices capable of using LTE technology.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 1:37 PM with the headline "Court orders Sprint to keep WiMax network running for 90 days."