I got bit by the wimax nonsense as a consumer. I had a 4G HTC flagship phone on sprint and it was awesome. Then when I went and upgraded my phone a few years later to another HTC flagship phone, also with 4G, I was very confused why I could only use 3G.

The first phone was labeled 4G and second one was 4G LTE, which sprint didn't have in my area. I had been using wimax.

I switched to Verizon not too long after that so I could have 4G again

Wimax actually did work great in practical terms even if the clearwire network was made out of compressed spit.

All of them - all the CW sites, were under provisioned for backhaul.