We can cool the speculation about WiMax vs LTE, at least for a while. Clearwire’s deployments of WiMax have led to about 173,000 subscribers in USA alone, with 30M people covered in 29 USA cities. So it appears the answer to the question “Is WiMax real?” is YES. Actually, if the question is “Is LTE real?”, then the answer now is NO. But, of course, LTE will eventually be deployed almost universally by the mobile carriers.

The most likely outcome, in our humble opinion, is that WiMAx will be a de facto monopoly in wireless broadband, until LTE finally deploys. Then, given the usual insatiable demand for bandwidth, both WiMax and LTE will co-exist. We seriously doubt that either of these deep technologies, repleat with financially heavy duty backers, will fail.

See IEEE Spectrum for more.