WiMax Is Brought Back From the Dead

Call it FrankenMax. A new effort to get WiMax up and running looks like a monster assembled in somebody's basement—probably the basement of Sprint Nextel as it was flooding with red ink.

Sprint said it would join forces with Clearwire, the other big player in WiMax. The new technology for years has promised to deliver broadband speeds over a wireless network, and it was feared dead as problems mounted at Sprint.

The combined WiMax venture will also get $3 billion from new partners Google and Intel, along with a number of cable companies.

That seems like a lot of different partners with as many different agendas. We should soon see how well the consortium might hold together. Sprint hoped to have some of the network in place later this year.

WiMax will compete with a different wireless broadband technology being deployed by Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Those companies have the money to go it alone with a single purpose and a single message and without having to revive a beast from the grave.