The WiMAX community is still celebrating after Sprint announced earlier this month that it would deploy the technology. It is in fact a big vote of support that almost validates the existence of this worldwide community.

Almost, but not quite. What would further validate the WiMAX ecosystem is some certain knowledge that the U.S and other countries around the world were keen on making room for even more network operators who could deploy WiMAX. That could come through the licensing of a greater amount of spectrum for those companies to use.

The ongoing Advanced Wireless Services auction could have been an occasion for the WiMAX community to further rejoice over an opportunity to gain more usable spectrum, but the truth is that anyone thinking about deploying WiMAX never really had a fighting chance to win spectrum in the AWS auction.

The block of companies leading the bidding in this auction are basically a who's who of the largest mobile carriers in the U.S. Even if they don't have a need for the spectrum (which is probably true in every case of the top four carriers except T-Mobile) they have the reserves to out-bid anyone around them who might be defined as a new market entrant.

After they win those spectrum licenses, they potentially will have 2-5 years of relocation negotiations ahead of them, less if they really want to use that spectrum, but what's the rush?

When the Federal Communications Commission acted this week to accelerate the AWS auction, my first thought was why not just end it now? To do so would give the agency more time to develop an auction process that actually allows new faces, new competition, new ideas, new services and new technology a fighting chance.