provides economies of scale and faster adoption of WiMAX. The certification program will continue to be updated SO that WiMAX equipment will evolve and improve performance over time. Next Generation Mobile Communications Ecosystem Industry Outlook Except for Sprint Nextel no other major operator has announced that Mobile WiMAX will be its technology choice for the next generation network. On May 7, 2008, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel's wireless broadband unit Xohm announced their intent to merge, combining Sprint's 4G WiMAX network (Xohm) with Clearwire's existing pre-WiMAX broadband network. Sprint owns 51% of the firm, with ex-Clearwire shareholders owning 27% - a consortium of Comcast, Time Warner, Intel, Google, and Bright House. Clearwire and the cable companies will buy 3G mobile broadband from Sprint as MVNOs [18]. Clearwire/Sprint officially launched Portland, Oregon as the first market using the new service. Sprint/Clearwire is currently aggressively rolling out WiMAX in other parts of the USA. The service simply called "Clear" is currently offering between 1 and 6 Mbps. The other tier-1 operators like Deutsche Telekom and AT&T had abandoned their WiMAX trials; claiming the technology will remain too immature for enterprise quality services for at least two more years. Vodafone and Verizon have also decided to follow AT&T. Thus a vast majority of tier-1 3G operators have not paid much heed to WiMAX and selected 3G-LTE as the technology of their choice for their next generation network. Contrary to operators, WiMAX is on the roadmap for most of the major suppliers around the world (except Ericsson). Ericsson pulled itself out from the WiMAX bandwagon by stating it won't add to its revenue and shifted its R&D on EPS. Some additional WiMAX industry updates are as follows: Sprint launched the first handheld WiMAX device 'HTC Evo 4G' from HTC. The dual mode device can work in both EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX networks (June 2010) The WiMAX Forum and the Femto Forum have jointly announced the publication of the first 