BetaNews' Ed Oswald looks at the current state of WiMAX in the United States via an interview with Dean Chang, Director of Product Management at Aperto Networks.

"Chang [says] it is the wireless carriers who own much of the spectrum -- namely Sprint Nextel and Verizon -- and they are holding off for the mobile implementations of the technology," Oswald writes. "That isn't due until 2007."

Still, Oswald says, mobile WiMAX will be worth the wait. "Instead of the slow uptick in data speeds currently offered through the migration to 3G, mobile WiMAX would offer an immediate boost to several megabits per second -- true mobile broadband," he writes.

Business users will be the first targets of any such offering, Chang says, with pricing looking similar to current 3G services: about $50 a month on top of a calling plan.

Business or consumer, that's a pretty great price for "true mobile broadband" speeds -- 2007 can't come soon enough.