Sprint and Samsung released a joint press note saying that the WiMAX network has finally passed Sprint’s rigorous commercial acceptance criteria and it should be ready for real world deployment by end of this year, in Washington DC and Baltimore. Barry West, XOHM president said, “this is a major step towards launch readiness and Sprint is extremely pleased with the performance of the mobile WiMAX network and access devices from Samsung.” Sprint started testing the WiMAX networks last year and initially had plans to cover 100 million people by end of 2008. But now Sprint says that the initially rollout will be in only two cities and they will add more cities next year, pushing back the original rollout schedule.