Overheard: WiMAX gets a marketing makeover

It turns out the announcement isn’t a new vaporware wireless technology, it’s my favorite old vaporware wireless technology, WiMax. Sprint finally figured out what to do with it. The unbelievably frustrating part is that Sprint has pretty much slipped the deployment plan for WiMax by another two years. It’s hard to get excited about a new technology, no matter how great the investors, when I have zero confidence in the companies’ ability to deliver. Michael Mace, WiMax gets closer and further away at the same time

The involvement of Google means we’re very likely to get a pretty much open ecosystem on a major wireless network, which Silicon Valley has been collectively screaming about for years. The size of the investments mean there is a lot of money available to build out the network. People ought to be dancing in the streets here, but instead most of them appear to be either yawning or throwing spitwads.

I’d be out there dancing myself if it weren’t for the slip in the schedule.

Hat’s off to Michael Mace for explaining the real buzz around WiMAX.