WimaxWorld Next Week

I will be travelling to beautiful Boston, MA next week for WiMAXWorld, "Transforming the Next Generation of Mobile Broadband." As long time readers of IP Inferno know, we have been covering the WiMAX story for almost 2 years. Previous posts have discussed the possible threat to 3G from WiMAX, the attempt by Qualcomm to slow down WiMAX, why AT&T is (was) investing in WiMAX, the attempt by Canadian company Wi-Lan to extract royalties from WiMAX manufacturers, and all the way back in June of 2004, an interview with Dr. Mohammad Shakouri, the chair of the marketing group of the WiMAX Forum. In that interview, Dr. Shakouri said,

"Managing the hype and executing over the next few years are our biggest problems."

He was right to express this concern. Even here at IP Inferno we declared a Summer of WiMAX... err... in 2004. And even Dr. Shakouri's best guess that the first WiMAX certified equipment would be out by June 2005 was wrong. Vendors are now saying November 2005...

All of the hype has lead to more than a few people writing WiMAX off altogether. The Muniwireless blog pointed me toward an article on WiMAX and disaster response over at silicon.com which reports that

Markku Hollström, head of WiMax business programme at Nokia, said the technology had already been oversold: "WiMax is hype at the moment and it's pretty bad hype."

The muniwireless post also provided a pointer to this first hand account by Sascha Meinrath, WiMax Hype and Disaster Response. AKA: The WiMax Story You Won't See Blasted Around in the News. But the complaints really aren't with the core technical idea behind WiMAX, just that the equipment isn't "...ready for prime time." So blame the press (including IP Inferno) for hyping this technology before it was ready, and give it another chance. Boston's WiMAXWorld should be a good platform for the industry to stand up and tell us what is going to work and when it will work.