A Chia thing...

Vodafone through their Senior Director of Vodafone’s US R&D Group, Dr Stanley Chia, are apparently not worried about the emergence of WiMax, but...

"That leaves mobile WiMAX’s main potential as giant hotspots. The concentrated nature of mobile usage – three quarters of most peoples’ activity occurs in three locations – means this threat cannot be totally ignored. Dual mode handsets, which permit switching between networks (mobile and WiFi), are being developed by Nokia (and Motorola), among others. Qualcomm seemed to concede 3G’s potential inadequacies by buying Flarion, which specializes in a rival but similar technology (Flash OFDMA) to WiMAX, last August. The basic strategy of most mobile operators of being married to 3G, but being open minded about flings with other technologies, thus looks correct.”

...doesn't exactly rule out getting involved!

I think the '...threat cannot be totally ignored...' part qualifies as understatement of the month.

The arguments in the article, (admittedly I'm reading secondhand), are somewhat contradictory. Reading between the lines I'd say it's a pretty good case for getting into the market, not staying out.

I have mentioned this in the past, Dr Stan says it, and I'll say it again. People used mobiles in distinct places, not ubiquitously, therefore why does everyone insist that there is a need for a ubiquitous network?
Even if you did build out a 99% coverage network, it's still going to cost you substantially less than a 3G network to build and operate.

Incidentally, I'm seeing a few more Intel stories about building global WiMax. I expect to see some more investment in rollout over the next months.