Right now 3G speeds are becoming the standard but everyone has their eye on 4G which right now consists of WiMax/Clear and LTE. Sprint and the newly formed Clearwire have had some trouble getting their 4G network off the ground and they’ve now hit another major stumbling point… Nokia. While Nokia is usually more neutral towards carriers/technologies at least in the public eye, they didn’t seem to hold anything back when dissing WiMax into oblivion.

The Financial Times has reported that Nokia’s head of Sales & Manufacturing, Anssi Vanjoki, said the following at a recent launch event:

“I don’t think the future is very promising [for WiMax]. This is a classic example of industry standards clashing, and somebody comes out as the winner and somebody has to lose. Betamax was there for a long time, but VHS dominated the market. I see exactly the same thing happening here.”

In case you didn’t know, Betamax and VHS went head to head and VHS won much like HD and BluRay went head to head and BluRay won. Not many people are warming up to WiMax these days and it is unclear whether or not 2 different 4G technologies will easily co-exist. Right now we’ve got Verizon Wireless and Sprint on CDMA networks while AT&T and T-Mobile run based on GSM technology. So there is no reason Sprint CAN’T run solo on this one… but it’d be mighty hard especially considering VZW has proclaimed their loyalty to LTE already.

Sprint is aggressively expanding WiMax coverage and this year plans to launch in 10 cities in 2009.