WiMax Hype and Disaster Response. AKA: The WiMax Story You Won't See Blasted Around in the News.

I've got nothing against WiMax -- in fact, I'm looking forward to having another wireless tool in my networking toolbox. But, as I am constantly telling municipal representative, the press, and anyone else who asks, WiMax is decidedly not an upgrade to WiFi -- WiMax is different technology, optimal in some situations, and far worse than WiFi in others -- and while wireless generally is a new technology, WiMax is so new it hasn't even been standardized yet. And while most folks are more than happy to uncritically sing the praises of WiMax, folks on the ground doing Katrina disaster recovery have had a decidedly different experience with things. Is there more to the story -- absolutely, but here's the info that's publicly available from Katrina Emergency Wireless Response team member Mac Dearman:

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First things first - - I want to thank Bob Van Zant and Joe Miller for spending their entire day today taking down the Trango Atlas radios and 3′ dishes from the MCI POP and Mississippi Power tower as they were hanging the WiMax RedLine gear & antennas supplied by MCI/Intel Corp. The fact that this new link didn’t link is the sad part of a wasted day for two climbers and ground crews as well as for Charlie Sizemore and Hector of MCI. It was very disappointing for everyone that was there as well as myself in N. Louisiana this evening. I was so looking forward to having the 45meg link back up as well as actually getting to try out the WiMax stuff.

This was the second time in the air for this particular set of RedLine WiMax radios that they would not make link. The first time in the air was a link MCI attempted to make from their POP in Gulfport to the Imperial Palace in Biloxi. They were removed and replaced by a set of Proxim Tsunamis that I understand are “rocking.” One of the old addages that I have heard since childhood is “first time is shame on you - - second time is shame on me” and thats all I will say about this matter on the WWW.

What's important here isn't that the equipment isn't (yet) working -- but rather that there's still an amazing amount of work still to be done before WiMax is ready for prime time.