Verizon’s selection of LTE as their next-generation broadband standard has some outlets (like like Fortune) insisting that WiMax is officially in trouble. It wasn’t supposed to be this way; if you flash back to earlier this decade, WiMax was supposed to do everything from cure cancer to potty train your toddlers. In 2004, Intel called the technology “the most important thing since the Internet itself.”

It’s now almost 2008, and AT&T is only using WiMax as a limited rural DSL alternative. The nation’s largest WiMax company (Clearwire) still doesn’t have all that many customers, and our user reviews for their existing service have never been very positive. Their mobile WiMax network remains largely unbuilt.

Sprint, who was supposed to be the biggest proponent of WiMax, just fired the CEO who championed the technology, and is facing financial and customer service headaches. They recently scrapped a cooperative plan with Clearwire, and their investors are whining about deployment costs for their Xohm WiMax service.

It’s pretty clear the technology has stumbled out of the gate, despite Intel’s marketing bravado. WiMax supporters seem to be clinging increasingly to foreign deployment as a cause for optimism.

Of course even in some of these foreign markets, WiMax isn’t faring particularly well, leaving us to wonder if a decade of WiMax hype was little more than sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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