Wiggle your toe if you heard this "all content, all the time" song-and-dance before. In spite of the deluge of press releases from the wireless carriers over the last few years, the present 3G network is still like "sipping through a straw", says Tim Sweeney, Director of Mobile WiMax at Intel. "Consumers should not have to distinguish between the mobile Internet and the Internet". Intel, together with Motorola, literally drove that point home this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The press was regaled with YouTube clips in a car, delivered via WiMax, while driving at 45mph. "More powerful microprocessors and high-speed WiMAX wireless networks will bring a new era of the full Internet on mobile devices".

Sprint Nextel plans to allocate 200 Megahertz toward a nationwide WiMax joint venture with Clearwire that values the entity at USD 15 billion. Sprint has 51 percent ownership, Clearwire 27 percent with Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Google holding the rest. For once agreeing with the press, Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, cited his experience of watching a broadband-delivered video clip at 50 mph in Portland as a reason for choosing to invest.

The initial metropolitan launch will be in Baltimore in September, followed by Chicago and Washington, DC. According to Barry Davis, Executive Director of Product Planning at Clearwire, "next year the service will cover a population of 60-80 million people, then 120-140 million in 2010". According to John Butler, CFO of Clearwire, the company estimates it will have 30.7 million subscribers by 2017, with coverage of 220 million people. Today, the company has 450,000 subscribers.

Of course, previous joint ventures among the media titans have not exactly scorched the heavens. "The difference this time", promises Davis, "is that our partners own their own customers. Nobody cares more about a Comcast customer than Comcast". Similarly, Mike Roudi, Head of Wireless at Time Warner Cable, told CNET "with Clearwire, we will control the customer relationship including the service and phones. We will handle pricing, marketing, customer care, and billing."

The only major roll-out to date has been in Korea, where consumer adoption has been slower than expected. Back in 2006, Korea Telecom and SK Telecom launched their own version, called WiBro, using Intel's WiMax standard. Because of technical hurdles, rights issues, limited marketing, limited dual band devices and costly subscriptions, as of 1Q Korea Telecom has achieved only 145,000 WiBro subscribers. Consumers have shown far more interest in free services like multi-user gaming and high-speed internet than a-la-carte video services. According to HJ Ahn, CEO of Synergy Holdings in Seoul and formerly head of IPTV for Korea Telecom, "its not enough to just be a pipeline on top of the network. You need truly unique content that is reasonably priced. The regulatory environment does not permit extensive advertising".

Dave Poltrack, EVP & Chief Research Officer of CBS Corporation, espouses an advertising-supported model for CBS's broadband video content, includng WiMax. "Ad-supported works. CBS can reach a larger audience and get a better return by using advertising". Clearwire and its wholsalee partners have not yet publicly announced pricing for the WiMax service. However, video is potentially an important component of that offering. In addition to video, entertainment might also include localizied, personalized, and location-based content. Other services will include residential voice and residential broadband, mobile voice and mobile broadband. that can complement the living room with devices such as PCs, portable media players and car systems. However, entertainment is potentially the most lucrative of these services. US households spend nearly five times the amount for entertainment than they do for broadband and telco. Moreover, the cable companies are deeply immersed in a no-holds barred war with the telcos to capture quad-play (video, broadband, mobile, voice) customers. In markets where telcos offer IPTV, there has been significantly greater consumer take-up than cable companies' VOIP voice offerings.

Communications services available on WiMax already available include Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk applications. As a "preferred vendor", YouTube may ultimately come preloaded on relevant devices. Google invested because it desperately needs a mobile internet running on an open operating system and requiring lots of searches. Google has championed an open-source, mobile operating system called Android. Verizon and AT&T use their own proprietary operating systems and have been reluctant to adopt handsets that run on Android. WiMax would finally provide Android with a large addressable universe of mobile broadband users. Google engineer Dan Morill wrote on the Android Internals discussion board, "Android has two goals: First, to be an excellent mobile platform on its merits, and second, to be open and open source". Google's $500 million investment (a pittance compared to the USD 4.6 billion they bid for spectrum earlier this year) ensures the Android operating system software, which still lacks a US wireless carrier partner, will be available to those 30 million WiMax subscribers. Ka-Ching!!

What is less clear is how content owners will monetize in this new environment. Rick Robinson, VP Business Development and Planning for Sprint's XOHM division, does not pretend to know which services will resonate with WiMax subscribers. "We can set the stage but the best thing is to make it easy for consumers and then follow. In an un-tethered environment, we may see a fundamental shift in the form of video content, for both creating and consuming content. Already we are seeing new devices, at a variety of price points and in various form factors, enabling the evolution". He suggests "producers immerse themselves in the mobile experience - one that comes with the new element of 'location' - and create content and apps directly targeted at associated and anticipated use cases and supported by advertising"

Video on non-traditional platforms without an ad-supported model has failed to reach mass audiences. For example, Sirius presently offers only three in-vehicle video channels but charges a subscription fee of $20. Similarly, mobile television in the United States has reached a plateau of 5% penetration (Nielsen Mobile), in part because of the expensive subscription. Art Spivy, Director of Content and Community for Sprint XOHM, advocates "an environment like the web, an ad-supported model to watch any show when you want. Advertising could be more relevant and valuable by knowing the viewers current location, which is built into the XOHM network". Barry Davis at Clearwire also encourages studios, networks and content owners to consider revenue models based on advertising. One example is the television series "Smallville" from Warner Brothers, which ran short 3 minute episodes on Sprint's mobile network that were ad-supported and generated high user engagement. Barry Davis recommends content owners "consider all the ways you can touch end users with this big pipe. The web brought the advent of the short episode in an ad-based model. There will be new ways to build a business around WiMax. One place to begin is the portal. We have different needs on a portable device then we do at our desk".

Beginning with WiMax this year and followed with a competing technology called LTE which Verizon will test launch next year, content owners now have another distribution platform for story-telling. The long-term opportunity lies in weaving the characteristics of mobile broadband- mobility, interactivity and location- within storytelling. What ever WiMax TV ends up being, you can be sure that it will include those dancing bunnies.