The flagship device to use it may be rarer than hens’ teeth but that hasn’t stopped Sprint from pushing 4G market growth, with seven new metropolitan areas getting access to the WiMAX goodness. Rochester, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Merced, Calif., Visalia, Calif., Eugene, Ore., Tri-Cities, Wash., and Yakima, Wash. take Sprint’s coverage to 43 markets, though there’s still a significant absence in high-profile areas like NYC. According to Sprint’s Dan Hesse, New York should see WiMAX arrive by the end of 2010.
That puts it perilously close to Verizon’s rumored November LTE launch, though so far we’ve not heard which markets the rival carrier will be targeting initially. Sprint have a second 4G-capable handset, the Samsung Epic 4G, due to launch “in the coming months” which hopefully won’t suffer the same stock shortages as HTC’s devices.