IT certainly has been a long wait to have WiMax up and running. Perhaps sometime middle of this year, Packet 1, one of the WiMax licensees, will be able to quench our thirst for neck-breaking wireless broadband speeds – exceeding even the fastest High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) services possible.

WiMax is hoped to resolve the last-mile issue that has deprived many of broadband Internet in Malaysia while HSDPA, or third-generation (3G) for that matter, is never meant to compete with wired broadband Internet services.

What’s the current situation in terms of 3G services? Well, Maxis and Celcom are pushing such services through roadshows.

Maxis is striving to sell its packages that promise up to (another best-effort) 3.6 megabits per second (Mbps) at a monthly subscription of RM98 if you get the rather bulky ZTE modem version; the universal serial bus version goes for RM138. Celcom sells a similar service at 10 sen per 10 kilobytes, RM8 for24 hours, or RM98 per month.

The good thing about wireless Internet packages is, you almost immediately get to enjoy the wonders of broadband Internet once you bring the modem home. There’s no issue of waiting, as with an asymmetric digital subscriber line subscription such as streamyx, which can be bothersome for those who do not want to get a fixed phone line.

It is potentially a moment of instant gratification: just plug it in, turn it on, and get connected. But it can also easily turn into a “bored-band” affair when you find out that there is no guaranteed minimum level of service when it comes to HSDPA or 3G services. Surely enough, there are quality of service guidelines, but one wonders if getting less than half of a promised speed is quality at all.

At the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress 2007 in Macau, Ericsson’s chief executive officer Carl-Henric Svanberg said a flat rate for services is the way to go, citing that data services such as “3” in Sweden with 7.2Mbps costs US$30 (RM95) for unlimited access, “3” in the United Kingdom with 3.6Mbps at US$20 for up to one gigabyte, and Maxis Malaysia with 3.6Mbps at US$32 for up to 3GB.

But with services the way they are, it will be a miracle to get that 3GB cap.