Ah, what a PR fiasco this is going to be...

"going to be"? It seems to me that WiMax has been a non-stop fiasco from the beginning. But yeah, this will only make it worse. Much worse.

Quite.

It always surprised me Nokia made such move for US market, with an inpopular standard. Then I learned HS*PA is not rolled out well in USA.

Still, the device is based on old hardware and old software. It was released far too late. Now we're heading in the OMAP3 era. How can they justify selling the N810WME for such prices if newer devices have far better capability?

That, and touchscreen smartphones are taking of.

I, for one, do love the colours of the device. But that wouldn't be worth that much money compared to N810, I already own a N810, the WiMAX chip won't work here because of different frequency, and right now I wouldn't buy such device because soon newer devices are released making 1) the older go price dumping 2) providing better performance.

WiMAX itself has its potential, especially in areas where it doesn't have to compete with HS*PA(+) or LTE in the short term. But from what I understood it is there where Clearwire rolls it out and is very expensive (not competitive). It does not have to be competitive because there is no competition.

For EU it doesn't matter. With ISPs upgrading to HSPA+ here I chose for HS*PA, and I leave WiFi and WiMAX behind. My only issue will be the expensive EU roaming costs.

At this point it might be best to develop Symbian and Linux based touchscreen smartphones. They're having the momentum. That, and netbooks as replacement for laptop while viable for children and people with less cash to burn.

... compared to what? WiMAX?

For the cities, HSPA is quite well covered.

For rural areas? ... this isn't S. Korea where the entire country is smaller than some of our Metropolitan Areas so they can deploy WiBro almost over night. Of course it's going to be slow rolling out to the rural areas, where profitability and population densities are so low that it almost doesn't matter. Those areas are fine being served by EDGE.

Compared to how well it is rolled out in most EU countries.

Smartphones are hot nowadays. Everyone is getting one.

WiMAX is rolled out for several purposes:

1) Direct competition with over-expensive but already rolled out HS*PA.
2) Customers who travel a lot in a specific area where WiMAX is rolled out.
3) Families who live in rural areas where rolling out DSL, cable (or fiber) is not profitable.

It appears some people (including moi) want(ed) WiMAX to function as option #1 and that this is failing for one or another reason (I can state various such as lack of roaming, lack of short term ROI + credit crisis, or non-competitive cost of subscription).

I just heard Obama wants to roll out broadband in the whole USA. So I guess every American can soon experience T1-like speeds with good overbooking. Good luck with that in rural areas.

In other words, where most of the countries have geography concerns more like S. Korea than the US :-)

Indeed, although at this point it is rather, region(s) in countries. Having a nation-wide license doesn't mean the network is (immediately) rolled out nation-wide. Didn't happen with other packet radio networks either.

Difference is however that WiMAX is being rolled out in regions where there is no HS*PA or cable/DSL; rural areas. The US has a lot of these as well.

Gee, I wonder if 4G is gonna be the drawn-out fiasco that 3G was.

There's a possibility rural areas may be addressed first. Debate still ongoing.

Because even farmers should have high-speed access to pr0n Wikipedia! I meant Wikipedia!