I’m a huge fan of the cellular WAN cards and the connectivity options that they provide.  Extending that access to a group of people was always a bit of work, but made it real easy to set up an office on the go or otherwise share the joy of being online. 

Novatel is addressing the complexities of the sharing with their new line of EvDO routers.  The device is a combination of a cellular WAN card and wireless router.  A single device to handle both the LAN and WAN halves of the connection.  Plus, it looks good.  It even runs on a battery rather than requiring a plug, so you can set up your own personal hotspot on the train.  I’m officially in lust.

Following on the news a couple weeks back that Sprint wasn’t too keen on the Android platform, it seems like Nokia is joining the fracas.  They are very happy to use Linux, which is the base of the Android platform, but aren’t particularly keen on Android itself.

“In the longer perspective, Linux will become a serious alternative for our high-end phones,” Ukko Lappalainen, vice president at Nokia’s markets unit, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the “Nokia World” industry conference….

“I don’t see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo,” Lappalainen said.

Yeah…Google probably isn’t going to be too happy about this hit on their platform.

Sprint and Clearwire have finally completed the merger of their wireless metropolitan data services (Sprint’s WiMAX service operating under the Xohm brand name and Clearwire’s pre-WiMax services).  And, as part of the merger, they’ve decided to rebrand the whole thing.  The new product will now be called “Clear” which shouldn’t be too confusing or particularly useful in identifying the product or what it does.

Sprint has been selling the Xohm service in Baltimore since the end of September so this will be interesting to see how the rebranding affects their marketing plans.  It will also be interesting to see if it affects their ability to differentiate between the new service and the legacy pre-WiMax systems.

In the mean time, however, it is good to know the name of what you’re buying should WiMax be in your future.

Also, it looks like the build-out of the network is slowing down a bit.  That’s not a good thing.