You will be stuck with cable for now because all your wifi access is connected at some point to cable, whether in your own digs or your provider's digs or your provider's provider's digs, etc..
What I mean is without cable, your wifi whether local or regional is dead.
Don't believe telecoms will have so much power. As long as the bandwidth licensing is by lottery, they can't foreclose on upstarts. Otherwise why have they not put Comcast out of biz?
But bandwidth lotteries are not even necessary with WIMAX technology. The beauty of WIMAX is that it allows small and large operators to use technology that packets and scrambles data in unregulated and unused bands like a HAM radio operator. WIMAX speed is phenomenal. So there can't be dialup obsolescence comparisons.
Gotcha. That's true at the moment with some exceptions. There are regional businesses that are on the same wireless network, they somewhat subsidize the network. There are also peering agreements between some neighboring wireless networks.
My understanding of WiMax was that some vendors offered it 2.4 GHz for testing with plans to move to a higher licensed frequency for rollout. Like WiFi, WiMax does not solve the cable problem you are talking about until there is better wide area mesh routing that everyone can install. Ultimately, being on the side of a mountain, I will be both a relay point and access point for a number of other nodes. I will gladly volunteer my time and power (switching to solar) to do this. The routing code will be open source and the network will be open and free for everyone subject to BW limits that the routers will take care of.