CHICAGO—On the eve of the WiMAX World convention, Motorola showed off its technology in the Smart Home at the Museum of Science & Industry, demonstrating how WiMAX can keep televisions and appliances in homes connected intelligently and without wires using the wide-area network.

It wasn’t last year’s boat trip on the Chicago River, where the company demonstrated a WiMAX hand-off, but the event for analysts and media showed how far the technology has come since last year’s WiMAX World.

Outside the home, Motorola allowed attendees to test drive Xohm, a service that Sprint expects to launch in Chicago “imminently.” Sprint Xohm Senior Vice President of Broadband Operations Atish Gude was on hand to congratulate Motorola for a job well done.

“The business model for what we’re trying to accomplish here, we think that’s the game-changing” factor in bringing mobile broadband to the marketplace, he said.

Baltimore was first city to launch in part because it’s a smaller area with varied characteristics and engineers can test to make sure systems are working, including back office, before it gets expanded to a wide area like Chicago. Xohm already has more than 600 sites lined up in the Chicago market, and “the launch is imminent,” he said.

The smart home included a demonstration of how the Motorola USB 100 in a laptop can deliver high-speed broadband to the home. Last week, Motorola unveiled its first WiMAX USB adapter, the USB 100, available for 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz.