Believing the hype

It should surprise no one that WiMAX surfaced as one of the more dominant recurring themes of this year's Supercomm show. Coming in, the WiMAX hype was getting pretty thick, and these trade shows tend to become forums where the buzz surrounding new innovations is either formally christened as the next big thing, or dispassionately dispatched as too immature for serious consideration.

The most notable thing to say at the end of this year's show about WiMAX was that many speakers, exhibitors and attendees already feel that the technology is more than just hype. That is evidenced in the relatively sober reaction that news of Motorola joining the WiMAX Forum was received with when the announcement was made at the show this week. Normally, a company of that size and siginifcance joining this kind of effort would be met with observations that Motorola is giving the technology much-needed credibility, but with Intel and many other firms long on board at the WiMAX Forum, Motorola looks like just another company feeding the effort and getting in position to take advantage of it.

WiMAX still has its critics, but their criticism this week was very tempered. The best line they could muster was the one about the Forum's schedule for product interoperability certification testing being a little overly aggressive. What technology hasn't been down that path?

Here's something to consider: It took DSL about eight or nine years to gain broad industry support and commercial viability. It took voice over IP at least seven years to get that kind of support. Through many years and different variations, fiber-to-the-whatever still is fighting for that respect. All of these technologies suffered from disagreement over standards, or lacked standards altogether. WiMAX already has won that battle, and it's appearance on the commercial stage is less a matter of "if" than "when." And "when" will become "now" by Supercomm 2005. See you there to talk more about how the first round of commercial WiMAX products are fairing.