This pretty much moves me from "looking to upgrade" to "wait and see". I live on Long Island, so the closest WiMax area is in Queens and I just don't go into the city enough get much benefit. If I upgrade, I'll be paying the extra $10 Smartphone Data fee, which wasn't in play when I signed up 2 years ago. If I upgraded now, all I'd be getting is a new phone with more features, but not getting the benefit of faster data speeds and I'd be paying more. I'll reassess once Sprint announces a more concrete rollout plan. I wonder how many others are postponing their upgrade. The iPhone probably helps them in that regard.
I signed up for a 4G plan for myself and wife in March 2011, so our two year contract will take awhile to satisfy. If I'm understanding their newsflash correctly, it sounds like my Samsung Epic 4G won't be able to take advantage of the LTE speeds, but maybe I'm wrong. I think their rollout plan is aggressive as usual and if they meet the deadlines I'll be an Olympic track star, which we all know is never going to happen.