Wimax on the ropes but still punching.(THE SIGNAL)

This time last year, Wimax was poised for greatness. The Wimax Forum stormed the Mobile World Congress with commercial gear for 802.16e and 240 live networks, while its closest competitor, LTE, was at least a few years off.

One year later ... well, not that much has changed, although one could be forgiven for thinking that Wimax was losing its mojo, given the recent spate of news.

For example, much noise was made over Nokia's decision to discontinue the N810 W'maax tablet, which was created for the US market, where Clearwire's Wimax offering has not exactly set the world on fire as Wimax proponents had hoped. Meanwhile, just before we went to press, Nortel Networks finally gave up on mobile Wimax, calling off its seven-month-old partnership with Alvarion.

In Australia, Wimaax is still struggling, with Unwired facing further delays in its network rollout due to the rising cost of buildout, which is 10% to 15% higher than it was a year ago.

Then there was Hong Kong's wireless broadband spectrum auction, which wrapped up in late January. Telecoms regulator OFTA had 195 MHz of spectrum in the 2.3-GHz and 2.5-2.6 GHz bands up for grabs, and when the dust settled, three bidders--CSL, China Mobile HK and Genius Brand (a JV between PCCW and Hutchison), walked away with 30 MHz of spectrum in the 2.5-2.6 GHz bands. Not a single Hz was sold in the 2.3-GHz band. No one even made an offer. And while the 2.5-GHz frequencies are compatible with Wimax, none of the winners have indicated that they intend to use it for anything other than LTE.

Still, it's hard to see how all this adds up to Certain Doom for Wimax. For a start, there's the 400+ operators who have actually rolled out Wimax (according to the Wimax Forum). Equipment sales figures are looking good as Well--Dell'Oro Group reports that mobile Wimax vendors had a record quarter in Q3 2008 with revenues quadrupled year on year, while Q4 was expected to set another record as well.

Still, Infonetics paints a grimmer picture. Add in ...