CHICAGO -- WiMax World kicks off today at the McCormick Place in Chicago.

Sort of.

The only reason why I qualify that is because Wednesday is the official first day of the two-day show, but today is the pre-conference, and as far as I can tell there's a full line-up of activities.

Here's a story about the whole show that ran Monday.

In general, today's spotlight will be on Kirkland-based Clearwire and Sprint Nextel, as they gear up to launch a nationwide mobile WiMax network early next year.

Essentially this pre-conference day is focused on the competitors lining up against the WiMax contingent.

In particular, there's going to be a lot of focus on the upcoming FCC spectrum auction. The airwaves are particularly good for wireless broadband, but it has yet to be determined which technology the winning bidder will choose to roll out.

Speaking today are executives from Ericsson and Qualcomm, as well as a panel of service providers. Those include Towerstream, a company delivering broadband to companies, Rogers Communications of Canada, Cisco Systems, and Xohm, a business unit of Sprint Nextel.

Check back in because I'll be writing updates during the day.