Pyramid Research makes some interesting observations about the future of WiMAX: The researchers speculate that Nextel might starting deploying WiMAX as early as 2005. Nextel has been very slow, compared to its competitors, to mark a path toward achieving higher data rates. The company just announced it will enhance its network to quadruple current data rates. While that sounds exciting, the enhancement only boosts throughput to less than dial-up modem speed. I'm not exactly sure why Pyramid thinks that WiMAX would make a good fit for Nextel, given Nextel's historical reluctance to stray from its existing iDEN network technology. But it would be great to see a major player like Nextel chase WiMAX. Pyramid also expects significant growth for WiMAX but not nearly as much as Intel expects.