4G Business Model Disruption

There will certainly be shifts in the market as 4G rolls out, but will they incremental or radical?  A recent article in Wireless Week (http://www.wirelessweek.com/Articles/2010/02/Technology-Shaking-Up-4G/) does not really indicate that the shifts will be dramatic other than commenting that Clearwire has the most free capacity, AT&T may have the best transition approach (given they are deploying HSPA 7.2 now and can use GSM for voice fall back), and Verizon has the early jump on LTE.  What this tells me is that we are in for more of the same at least for the next few years.  LTE will not be much more than a WiMax look-alike initially (dongles and air cards with rates between 6-10Mbps).  The real seperation could come when handsets are widely available (most likely end of 2011/2012) since this is when economies of scale and the major product/software players (Apple, RIM, Google, Nokia) start to drive the game.  The question is, can the market wait this long?  we have been suffering for a while due to the availability of smart phones and netbooks that can consume large amount of data (15-40X a typical feature phone) coupled with insufficient network capacity.  In order to prevent a huge backlash, the carriers will have to move more aggressively to femtocells and WiFi fallback as a way to stem the bandwidth crunch, or else players like Clearwire may be vaulted into a leadership position as connectivity and speed will trump everything else in the future.