At Techdirt, Mike takes a look at a recent Wall Street Journal article which "gets its basic facts wrong" on the recent announcement by Sprint that it's planning to deploy a nationwide WiMAX broadband wireless network.

Key to the WSJ article is the argument that wireless creates so much competition in the telecom space that there's no need for regulation. "If Congress should for some reason lose its cool and give in to the MoveOn.org crowd pushing for greater Internet regulation, it will likely come just in time for its backers, once again, to be proven wrong about the absence of competition in telecom," the WSJ article states.

But over at Techdirt, Mike points out that it's a little early to make that broad a promise. "Expect this to be delivered late and with quite a few kinks to be worked out (and performance that doesn't come close to living up to the hype," he writes. "So, yes, perhaps it will eventually add another competitor to the bunch, but it's far from certain that it's a real competitor who can make a difference."

But it gets worse. The WSJ article states, "WiMAX, meanwhile, operates in unlicensed spectrum, meaning Sprint doesn't have to shell out money in auctions to deploy the technology."

That's just plain wrong.

As Mike puts it, "This is basic fact checking that anyone who even looked at Sprint's announcement yesterday knows is 100% false. You'd expect much better from a paper like the WSJ. While WiMAX can work in some types of unlicensed spectrum, it's fundamentally meant for licensed bands and Sprint paid handsomely for their spectrum. Hell, it was perhaps the biggest reason for Sprint to merge with Nextel: to get all that 2.5 GHz spectrum. In other words, contrary to the central point of the WSJ editorial, it really isn't that easy for just anyone to throw up a competing service."