Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance is a fancy way of saying, "huh?" And that is just what I have been saying while sitting here in the Boston "World Trade Center" and listening to the WiMAXWorld press conference while simultaneously fielding emails from my friend Paul Kapustka at the USTA Telecom '05 show in Las Vegas. Its almost as if we are living in two different worlds...

As an example, Mo Shakouri (chair of the WiMAX Forum Marketing committee) says that BellSouth made an announcement that they are using WiMAX to deliver "instant circuits" in places like New Orleans and Florida where hurricanes have devastated the physical layer. But a quick search on the web finds that they have a test service running in New Orleans. According to another report they have only deployed three base stations.

Another news report from the USTA Telecom show states that "WiMAX is just hype without spectrum." In this article the author reports on BellSouth's CTO's comments on WiMAX:

BellSouth owns MMDS and WCS spectrum, and will focus its exploratory efforts there, said CTO Bill Smith. “But it’s hard to start building something on the expectation of spectrum. We have a lot of opportunities to invest capital that are more certain.”

It seems that at the USTA show, carriers are skeptical about WiMAX. Perhaps that is why they didn't come to Boston. But does that mean that the folks that came to Boston are pathological optimists? Or just represent different parts of the industry?

For now I'll take the second of these two options. But I'll keep working on answering this question while I am here...