Sanswire Networks has been promising the world broadband by blimp (aka blimpband) for almost five years. The promise has long been to deliver giant airships (called Stratellites) positioned 12 miles up, able to provide WiMax, Wi-Fi or cellular service to a land-mass roughly the size of Texas. Sanswire insists they can get one of these up in the air for $30 million, far less than the $250 million it costs to launch a Satellite, and with less latency.

From their FAQ, Sanswire envisions a future where hundreds of these automated airships float over America in an aerial mesh network. However thus far, they've barely been able to show that they can get a ship in the air during a stiff breeze.

For years all we saw were press releases. These included promises of a Stratellite launch over Lima, Peru that never happened. In fact nothing at all happened until last April, when the company unveiled their first prototype and began tethered testing in the Mojave Desert.

Today the company announced that their latest round of tests were a smashing success, and "demonstrate the effectiveness of delivering communications via the processes the Company had all along envisioned."

Except wait: these tests were tethered, using a ship one-fifth the size of the final promised product, floating at an un-specified height, in balmy 3 mph winds and California sun. After five years of PR that's a far cry from a massive automated airship that can brave the stratosphere for 18 months at a time in order to beam WiMax down upon us lowly terrestrials.

Obviously Rome wasn't built in a day, but it will be interesting to see how long investor confidence holds -- and if this idea ultimately gets buried alongside the Phantom game console in the broadband graveyard of broken dreams.