True mobile broadband, where art thou?

As a child, I remember seeing an ad in a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" comic book that advertised the forthcoming Ninja Turtles movie. Being a lover of all things turtles, I could hardly contain my excitement. There was only one small problem: the movie wasn't going to come out until 1990, which, at the time, must have been about 2 years away. Sure, two years might not seem like a long time to have to wait. But when you're five years old and you really want to see some dudes in rubber suits beating each other up on screen, it can seem like an eternity.

Call me impatient, but I can't help but feel pretty much the same way about next-gen wireless technologies like WiMAX. Now that we've all seen what advanced handsets like the iPhone, the HTC Touch and the LG Prada Phone can do, its only a matter of time before we have all sorts of powerful mobile applications running in the palms of our hands. But given the nature of current mobile data network limitations and some companies' myopic focus on web-based mobile applications (*cough*), I can't help but feel like we're in for a whole lot of disappointment. I want real ubiquitous mobile broadband, I want it everywhere and I want it now.

Granted, WiMAX isn't the only game in town--as you'll see in today's "This week in WiMAX" article, some folks are already looking past WiMAX to LTE and the next-to-next-generation of wireless technologies. But WiMAX currently shows the most promise: it's being backed by some of the largest players in the industry (Intel, anyone?) and companies like Sprint and Clearwire are already starting to build out the networks.

So what am I so upset about? Well, quite frankly, they're not building the networks out fast enough. Sprint announced earlier this year that we would be seeing WiMAX here in our nation's capital before 2008 but now, unsurprisingly, it looks like they're going to break that promise. Why? It all comes down to a question of financing: Sprint's shareholders don't want to see the company sink millions of dollars into building out a network based on unproven technology. So if not Sprint, then who? Clearwire, a small wireless operator, has been quite tenacious in deploying WiMAX: as a matter of fact, they already have just over 250,000 fixed WiMAX users under their belt. That's a promising figure but Clearwire is a small fish compared to Sprint--it will be years before they're able to roll out WiMAX to large numbers of U.S. users. I guess a couple of years isn't that long to wait for true mobile broadband. But when you really want broadband Internet in the palm of your hand, it can seem like an eternity.

By the way, I'm going to be going on vacation next week and FierceCIO editor Patty Brown will be filling in in my stead. Enjoy the week in tech, be nice to Patty and I'll catch you folks in a week. - Mehan