Forbes has reported Nokia spokesperson Eija-Riitta Huovinen saying that: “We jointly, with Intel, decided to cease this cooperation on the HSDPA module. The decision was made together... for very pragmatic reasons. We did not see there was enough for the business case.”

But as fellow iTWire colleague Stuart Corner points out in his very detailed article on “Nokia's back down on Intel embedded HSDPA deal questionable” Ericsson are already making such a module available to laptop manufacturers, beating Nokia and Intel to the punch. His article also lists excellent info on how far and widespread HSDPA already is across the globe today, as opposed to WiMAX which is predicted to get 10-15% of the market in a few years time.

But in terms of costs, with the high prices charged for access to 3G and 3.5G wireless broadband, usually costing in Australia approx AUD $100 for 1Gb of download per month, the carriers would seem to be the ones making the money – so maybe Intel and Nokia are right. But it just seems odd – for true wireless broadband, there’s only one reliable solution – and that’s to use some kind of 3G or 3.5G data card that plugs into your computer’s PCMCIA (PC Card) slot, or one that plugs into USB.

WiMAX is supposed to change this by giving consumers a country and world-wide network they can connect to as easily as Wi-Fi that will theoretically allow a single sign-on for the entire planet, when WiMAX is everywhere. It would also place pressure on cell phone companies to offer their wireless broadband at much more attractive prices to compete, bringing wireless broadband prices down to much more realistic levels.

But while WiMAX looks to be unstoppably coming with so much support from Intel, aside from a few pre-WiMAX and test WiMAX networks around the world, you can hardly say that Wi-Fi or WiMAX offer true almost anywhere wireless broadband.

The only solution that can truly say that is GSM cell phone networks offering 3G and now 3.5G HDSPA downloads at 550k to 1.5Mbps (on equipment rated at ‘up-to’ 3.6Mbps, which is soon to be increased ‘up-to’ 7.2Mbps and then ‘up-to’ 14.4Mbps with real world speeds slower than that but offering ADSL-1 type speeds through wireless broadband… today. And in a pinch, they’ll fall back to sub-broadband EDGE and sub-dial up GPRS speeds.

So if you truly want wireless broadband that you could even use globally, the only true solution right now is an expensive to use 3G, 3.5G or other wireless broadband data card. The big problem is the cost. You pay top dollar to get a 1Gb download limit. We really need download limits that are much larger – at least 10Gb, and preferably double or more, for that ‘top dollar’ price. Or at least 5Gb (and preferably 10Gb or more) at the cheaper prices, as often the cheaper plans give you less than 500Mb to play with.

If your operating system or Internet security software needs updates, these can often be quite large and can inadvertently chew up a lot of your precious download limit. Of course any large downloads should be saved for when you are back at home or in the office, but download limits and high costs for breaching those download limits are a serious issue that is hindering uptake of the system.

But that’s a different complaint about wireless broadband. What is the big problem for consumers when the 3.5G HSDPA module isn't built-into the notebook as it was slated to happen but has now been cancelled? Read onto page 2 for the conclusion...