News reports began to surface this week in which an Australian ISP CEO stated that WiMax was a disaster, suffered from miserable line of sight performance and latency, and was a technology "mired in opportunistic hype." Given that Intel and others have been hyping the technology as "the most important thing since the Internet itself" for a better part of the decade, you just knew there would be blowback.

Airspan, who provided equipment to the CEO in question (Buzz broadband) is saying that the poor performance was not the hardware's fault, but because the ISP had a poorly designed network and was, essentially, cheap. Sprint, who is getting ready to launch their Xohm WiMax network, was quick to point out the differences between Buzz broadband's implementation and their own:Fixed WiMAX has never been all that great, if our average user reviews for Clearwire, the U.S.'s largest fixed deployment, are any indication. Most of WiMax's U.S. success at this point hinge on Sprint's mobile WiMax deployment, since Verizon & AT&T have embraced LTE technology (though AT&T is using Airspan WiMax gear for some rural deployments).