The year’s just about over and everyone’s making their predictions and resolutions for 2009. Naturally, you’ve also got those who reflect on the events of the past year. GigaOM made an interesting list called “10 Stories That Define Broadband in 2008″. It’s a good list that mobile broadband makes frequent appearances on. What really stuck out to me was this lil chart showing the popularity of WiMAX:

As you can see, North America has the 2nd to least amount of commercial WiMAX networks in the world. If you take a step back and glance around a bit, you’ll also notice that the United States has fallen from the #4 spot for broadband penetration to #24 in the world.

Umm…That’s huge.

What does it all mean though? If you hit the zoom out button on Google Earth a bit more, you’ll see that you’re looking at a nation that’s neglected to keep pace with the world not just in broadband infrastructure, but infrastructure period. Who’s to blame? Hmm, a war that costs 1.2 trillion maybe. But then again, sometimes we need a little help in understanding what 1.2 trillion dollars could buy.

Is there hope?

In one word, yes.

President-Elect Barack Obama is exploring just about everything that could work to turn this around. Among the solutions is a stimulus package of sorts for broadband providers. Naturally, they’re lined up to get it. The only problem here is that their self-serving tendency vs. providing the actual consumer with fair service.

Now if we could just agree on what broadband actually is , maybe we can get somewhere.

Here’s my take: 

WiMAX is looking the most promising of all broadband (and mobile broadband) prospects that are available. While it’s not as fast as Verizon FiOS service, it’s decent, allows for mobility, and for the time being claims to be unlimited without major restrictions on what you can do with it.

If Sprint & Clearwire can pull off a nationwide network, continue to increase capacity and speed, while keeping restrictions down to a minimum then we’ll see net innovations grow. Yes, P2P usage will rise, but just as how the music industry must embrace mp3 and do away with their CD/album model, media moguls of all kinds must adapt to the changing landscape.

More power to net neutrality in 2009.