Sprint launches consumer EV-DO service

As expected, Sprint today officially launched their high speed EV-DO data service dubbed Sprint Power Vision. The EV-DO high speed data allows wireless data at average download speeds of 400-700 kilobits per second and a peak rate of about 2.0 megbits per second. 
  Two new services which take advantage of the EV-DO were also announced - Sprint Music Store powered by Groove Mobile which offers more then 250,000 songs from EMI Music, BMG, Warner Music and Universal Music Group. For $2.50 per song, customers get one copy of a song in WMA format for their PC and one copy in AAC+ format for their phone, which is downloaded in about 30 seconds over the EV-DO network.
 The second service is live, high quality streaming TV. Customers can choose from news, sports, weather, movie trailers and entertainment channels from major broadcasting brands including NFL Network and Fox News Channel LIVE, CNN To Go, NBC Mobile, ABC News Now, E! and Cartoon Network. The service also includes a streaming radio channel from SIRIUS.

By mid November, the Sprint Power Vision Network is expected to be available to an estimated 130 million people nationwide, and is expected to reach over 150 million people by early 2006. Currently, Sprint offers three different pricing plans:

• The Power Vision Access Pack - $15 per month for unlimited Web and data access, along with movie trailers, a streaming live news channel - ABC News Now, and a streaming radio channel - SIRIUS Hits 1, which is a commercial-free
• The Power Vision Plus pack - $20 per month includes all the features of the Access pack plus unlimited MMS (Picture Mail) and Sprint TV plus, which features streaming live TV and video content from familiar sources such as Fox Sports, the NFL Network, Fuel, Fuse and FashionTV
• The Power Vision Ultimate pack - $25 per month as as the Plus pack, but with Sprint TV Ultimate which features additional streaming live TV

Customer can also use EV-DO without signing for a Power Vision plan and the cost is $0.02 per kilobyte per data used.

Two new EV-DO phones were also officially launched today. The MM-a940 features 2.0 mega pixel camera with 2x optical zoom, miniSD memory expansion slot , MP3/AAC playback and speaker-independent voice recogntion. The MM-9000 has similar features, but its camera is only 1.3 mega pixels.

Source:
Sprint Music Store
New MM-a940 and MM-9000 phones