The Promise: “We will start with air cards and an in-building modem, then embedded devices will begin to appear in laptops and ultramobile PCs. But then imagine camcorders that display footage on monitors without wires or send files to social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace; car navigation systems that get Internet access and rear-seat entertainment; Internet video; public safety surveillance. Think Internet tablets, gaming devices, DVD players. You get the idea.” Certainly Sony and Nintendo must be salivating at the possibility of extending online play to future DS and PSP gaming systems.”

The Potential: “That means a potential end to the minute model, and perhaps an end to the cellphone as we know it, since VoIP could be built into anything with a Web browser, speaker and microphone. Earlier this year, Apple gave us the phone that also was a music player, camera and on down the line. But WiMAX may give us the camera or other connected device that is also a phone. Heady stuff.”

Background: Broadband is still patchy in the U.S., and Sprint is trying to use a variant of WiMax (called Xohm) to remedy this. It’s already gotten one CEO fired for being focussed on WiMax instead of traditional subscribers, but they have 10,000 base stations ready to launch. If it works, it will impact a lot of mobile services, enable location-based services and increase the potential of mobile, pervasive and wearable devices.

The story is from the senior tech editor of Popular Mechanics. You can read it here.

This could be smoke–but if it fails, it will be because something better comes along that does the same thing.