Sidecut Reports

Say this for Clearwire: They sure picked the right market (Portland, Ore.) to show this commercial:

Where’s my raft?

(we are guessing now the next Clear launch will be Green Bay, Wisconsin.)

And other news of note from the wireless, WiMax broadband arenas:

How about in-home cell towers? That’s kind of what you get when you buy a femtocell, like the one Verizon Wireless just started selling. More details here from our friends at Unstrung.

Michael Copps is FCC’s interim chairman: A nice honor for the longtime FCC commish, getting to wield the big gavel if only just for a little while.

AT&T to cut back on capex spending: Like we noticed with Verizon, it doesn’t seem like Ma Bell is in any mood to build out a new LTE network anytime soon, citing a need for caution in infrastructure spending.

More lawsuits from iPhone 3G users: Or maybe AT&T is saving money to spend it on lawyers who will be needed in cases like this one, which is about users suing Apple (again) for false advertising in regards to the iPhone’s 3G “performance.” Good thing there’s Wi-Fi in the device.

A prediction for the game: I say Springsteen wins, no matter what happens on the field. Odds that the band will play “Born to Run” are even money. In the end, our crystal ball says it will be the Cards and Kurt Warner hefting the big trophy to complete their surprising season. See you next week at 4GWE, where we can console ourselves over the end of the football season for another year.

In listening to a replay of Tuesday’s Verizon/Verizon Wireless year-end earnings conference call, I did hear some more optimism from company execs about launching “commercial” deployments of Long Term Evolution services by the second half of 2010 — not as aggressive as once thought, but still well ahead of stated LTE plans from other big national carriers.

But sifting through the financial data, I wasn’t able to quickly find any evidence that Verizon is starting to spend on infrastructure to make LTE services a reality, at least in any widespread fashion. If you wade through the financial-figures PDF you find that in 2008 Verizon spent roughly the same on domestic wireless capex as it did in 2007 — $6.510 billion in 2008, vs. $6.503 billion in 2007 — which says to me that the heavy spending for LTE isn’t happening yet.

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