Europe still needs a big deployment similar to Sprint Nextel and Clearwire in the US, it seems. That could well be under way since BT is planning, through WiMAX, to come back as a wireless service provider in 2008. And they have been running trials for many months with a range of vendors, some of whom have not yet been mentioned by the "smart" press. Whoever wins that deal will be in business, although WiMAX is still a buyer's market at present.

The WiMAX World Europe event in Vienna had not much that was new. Motorola, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent seem to be investing the most, at least among the big vendors, judging from the amount of people that they had at their booths. They were joined by Nokia Siemens this time. Best live demo was given by another vendor, though. SR Telecom from Canada showed how their QoS works when the network is congested. They loaded a link with a Smartbits box and ran video streaming, showing how it can influence the viewing experience for the end users. Nice demo and one that attracted the most service providers, since they felt like they were at home in their own labs. To me the best product marketing job at that show.

It is a bit later than afternoon - very late afternoon in fact. But while the blogosphere - at least from my selected list - seems to be falling into a "Sommerloch" (summer break) or maybe is having a Soccer World Cup hangover, there were still a few noteworthy things to be found today:

• Nortel and Huawei split, this is just 4 months after their joint venture started - rumors are out now that maybe Nortel might become an acquisition target itself.
• Brad Feld from Mobius Venture Capital talks on his blog about the things that can happen when employees decide to give up salary for an equity stake after they had already obtained funding. Nice insight that shows that VC investment and startup business is often like playing poker with highest stakes.
• "Good Morning Silicon Valley" is the place to go to read sarcastic things and rumors about high-tech celebrities. Of course they comment on Bill Gates's announcement that he is to step down from its day-to-day operations job in July 2007: This chief software architect has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down, or Damn shame Ballmer doesn’t have a foundation too, eh?
• Thanks to Guy Kawasaki's Top Ten Father's Day Gift List I was able to remind my wife and kids that there is - well - Father's Day this weekend. Thanks indeed, Guy! I will point out to them the Breitling Aerospace watch which is number 9 on the list because it is a Swiss high-quality product and I don't have to pay for it.
• Golem.de (in German) comments on the new release of Serendipity 1.0; one might think this is a brand new product now but that is untrue. Many releases have been out before and also we have been using this blogging software for our blog site and are pretty happy with it.
• Rumors of a Microsoft iPod/iTunes rival product/service could be read about in some gadget sites before, but now it is getting very concrete as Reuters reports.