Word on the street is that Sprint is about to become the latest US wireless carrier to commit to selling wireless broadband-enabled netbooks. And by street, I mean TechVi got an anonymous tip from a source with a pretty good track record. But I’m still going to file this in the rumor bin for now.
Sprint has offered netbooks in the past. This summer the company teamed up with Best Buy and HP to offer an HP Mini 110 for $0.99 when you signed up for a 2 year contract. But that offer doesn’t appear to be valid anymore.
According to the tipster, the program will launch on November 1st in Baltimore, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and San Francisco. These are trial markets, so if things go well, we could see a wider rollout later this year or sometime next year.
There aren’t any details yet on the computer models that will be available or the pricing. AT&T and Verizon already offer subsidized netbooks to customers that sign up for 3G data plans in a number of US cities.
Update: It looks like the netbook may be a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with a 10 inch screen, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, and HDMI output which seems to imply that this will be a version with an Intel Atom Z5xx series procesosr and GMA 500 graphics. TechVi reports that the netbook will cost $199 after a $100 mail-in rebate when you sign up for a $60/month 3G service plan.