In last year's 700 MHz Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum auction, Cox Communications won 14 Block A and 8 Block B licenses for bids totaling $304 million. Through a joint venture with Sprint and several other cable companies, Cox also spent $2.37 billion to buy 137 AWS licenses. If those acquisitions didn't make it obvious, Cox is planning to become a wireless voice/broadband carrier. Unlike Comcast and Time Warner Cable however, Cox wants to do more than just resell existing service -- they want to build a wireless network. That build is well underway, but so far Cox has been quiet about specific details for the service.

That changed somewhat today, when Cox reached out to us to announce the first three markets they plan to deploy wireless service: Hampton Roads, Virginia; Omaha, Nebraska, and Orange County, California.

"In our initial markets, we are leveraging Sprint's 3G CDMA network and assets to get to market quicker, while managing every aspect of the service ourselves," Cox tells Broadband Reports. "In parallel, we are building our own wireless network with 3G CDMA for additional market launches that we'll announce in the future," says the cable company. Cox also tells us that they're currently testing LTE technology, for a migration to the faster service sometime down the road.

Cox wouldn't get any more specific about pricing, speeds or caps -- saying they're keeping that close to the vest for "competitive reasons." There's also no solid launch data for these three initial markets, the company only going so far as to say that general availability in the three mentioned will be announced sometime in 2010. The company says they're already offering service in those markets to a small test group of customers.