In some ways, Sprint Nextel's early embrace of Mobile WiMAX has done the 802.16 cause harm as well as good. It has subverted the marketing agenda almost entirely towards wide area mobile broadband and established carriers, taking the spotlight off the markets where the prospects for WiMAX are far more assured - fixed and nomadic or metrozone broadband, largely for underserved areas or to complement fixed models. This mismatch has only been emphasized in the past few weeks, with the success stories coming from traditional deployments and vendors, like Alvarion, and further doubts hanging over the ambitious Sprint/Clearwire joint venture plan.

So as the industry continues to set too much store by the ups and downs of Sprint and Clearwire - and associate them intimately with the rise and fall of WiMAX as a whole - both partners have reported a disappointing quarter, with Clearwire's widening losses particularly in the spotlight. However, Clearwire insisted that the formation of the joint venture to create 'the new Clearwire' with Sprint Xohm is on track, a statement that boosted its shares by 2.5% to $9.21 last Wednesday.

AT&T may be trying to block the merger of Sprint Nextel's and Clearwire's WiMAX activities, but it is also proceeding with its own, more limited, plans for the technology. The telco has been trialling WiMAX-class technologies in rural areas for a few years and now its CTO John Donovan says the system is "at the top of the list" as an alternative to copper.

Donovan said, in an interview with newspaper USA Today that the cost of copper roll-out was making it prohibitively expensive to build DSL for rural communities. This is the usual dilemma that has left the US' rural reaches sadly underserved by broadband and 3G - high cost of deployment, coupled with sparse and often low income populations, and falling broadband tariffs. This ROI-challenging combination could be addressed by broadband wireless, and specifically the standards-based economics of WiMAX, believes Donovan, echoing the view of WiMAX that has driven most of the world's actual deployments, away from the headlines about mobile broadband and 4G - that it is a natural leader for wireless DSL and fixed/nomadic access for underserved areas, and this market will be far easier to dominate than mobile applications.