After a couple of years of hype, the mobile Web of the future was on display at the big CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas this week.

Intel, Motorola, and WiMax startup Clearwire gave journalists rides in a GM SUV equipped with a high-speed 2 Mbps WiMax connection. And companies from Microsoft to Nokia showed off technology and services to give mobile consumers and workers the full, rich experience of the fixed Internet over mobile devices -- anywhere, anytime, and at any speed.

"This is a change that will reshape the future of our industry and determine success vs. failure of our companies," said Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, in a keynote speech. "The mobile Internet is here for real and it's happening now."

The day before at CTIA, Microsoft unveiled the newest version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.1, which includes the latest edition of Internet Explorer Mobile and promises to bring "desktop grade" Web browsing to mobile devices.

Nokia, the world's No. 1 handset maker, unveiled its first mobile device equipped with WiMax connectivity, the N810 Internet tablet. The Nokia device will run over the forthcoming WiMax network from Sprint, called Xohm, which is scheduled for commercial launch later this year. Xohm gives Sprint a "two-year time-to-market advantage" over other so-called "4G" wireless broadband technologies, including Long Term Evolution or LTE, said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse in his CTIA keynote.

To be sure, the truly mobile Web faces challenges ahead. "If there's a mass market to be developed for broadband wireless, there isn't adequate spectrum" available in the U.S., even after the recently concluded 700 MHz auction, asserts Marshall Pagon, CEO of startup WiMax provider Xanadoo. And the roll-out of Xohm has been affected by the turmoil Sprint has endured over the last year, and its debut in a few major U.S. cities including Chicago and Washington, D.C., will probably slide from spring into summer.

The future of Xohm will almost certainly be determined by how successful Sprint is in turning around its core cellular business -- and whether it can reach a deal with Clearwire and cable giant Comcast to help fund the build-out.

There are also standards wars looming in wireless broadband. Sarin, in his keynote, advocated that WiMax be considered as "part of the TDD [Time Division Duplex] section of the LTE standard," a stance that got scattered applause from the CTIA audience, but will not be looked on favorably by Hesse and other WiMax backers.

And even as the new era dawns, older forms of technology can be more reliable. Showing off the new WiMax-enabled N810, Nokia hoisted journalists 180 feet above the Vegas Convention Center, strapped into seats around a metal conference-table-in-the-sky. The mobile devices provided worked just fine -- but they weren't using WiMax. They were connected via Wi-Fi, since Nokia wasn't authorized to use the temporary WiMax network set up by Motorola and Clearwire for the vehicular demo. In the dawn of the mobile Web world, apparently, a few rain showers are still forecast.