Market research company Frost and Sullivan thinks that if spectrum auctions and commercial mobile WiMAX rollouts don't happen this year, eventually the putative standard could merge with 3G LTE. That's based on a number of suppositions.

The first is that Sprint-Nextel announced its mobile WiMAX service Xohm will be delayed. Further, said F&S, 3G LTE will be a fully ratified standard by the end of this year, and in late 2009 or early 2010 will offer peak data rates of 170Mbps.

Other factors militate in its favour, including the number of dual mode wi-fi/cell machines with better battery cost being sold at a much lower cost than before. Plus the members of the recently formed WiMAX consortium haven't really spelled out the IP deals they're offering for mobile WiMAX.

Worse, analysts at F&S say that 2009 will be the year when mobile WiMAX won't be considered as a feasible mobile broadband access technology.

Why? F&S thinks wifi is cool for indoor wireless broadband, and 802.11n will bring data transfers far better than mobile WiMAX. No doubt Intel won't be very happy with Frost & Sullivan. X