Betting the farm on WiMAX

Despite plenty of evidence that WiMAX sucks, Barrons reports that firms keep slogging on:

It’s the grand unified field theorem of wireless broadband: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that cable operators Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner (TWX) and Bright House Networks, as well as Intel (INTC) and Google (GOOG), all are in talks about funding a nationwide WiMax-based wireless broadband network that would be operated by Sprint Nextel (S) and Clearwire (CLWR).

The story says Comcast would invest as much as $1 billion in the venture, with Time Warner tossing in $500 million and privately held Bright House investing another $100 million to $200 million. The story says Intel could invest $1 billion or more, and Google could plunk down “hundreds of millions.”

Here’s a report from India:

Technically speaking the service goes down for like a day almost every week.

Is it an India thing? No. Nokia’s head of WiMAX programme:

Silicon.com quotes Mr. Hollström as saying that “WiMax is hype at the moment and it’s pretty bad hype.” … “From our point of view, it’s a great technology,” he added, “but not like it has been hyped.”

Is it a Nokia thing? Australia:

One of the early adopters of WiMAX technology in Australia has officially closed down its network. Buzz Broadband, which started running the WiMAX project last year, has encountered various problems with its WiMAX network.

Buzz Broadband CEO Garth Freeman called the WiMAX network a disaster and said it failed miserably in delivering good services to customers.

Maybe it’ll be different this time.