Sidecut Reports

The long-awaited details of Verizon’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G wireless service will emerge Dec. 1, in a press conference call that Big Red announced today. The main speaker will be senior veep and chief wireless technology officer Tony Melone (in photo), who appears to have taken over the lead-wireless-spokesperson role from Dick Lynch, who is CTO of the “Big V” Verizon, and not just Verizon Wireless.

What exactly will Verizon announce Wednesday? With the launch cities and airport markets already detailed back in October, what’s left are two critical components — pricing and data caps. We have no inside information so the best we can hazard is a guess that Verizon won’t stray too much from the existing wireless-data status quo. The official Sidecut Reports guess on pricing and plans is:

Devices: $100 (after rebate) for either of the USB modems that Verizon will offer. Any and all are almost guaranteed to be hybrid 3G/4G modems, since Mr. Melone told us that they would be so back in the spring. Makes sense, since Verizon’s 4G network will be incomplete at the start and the last thing Verizon wants is a modem that doesn’t connect to something.

Pricing plans: Our best guess in the pricing arena is that whatever Verizon starts with, it will be changed quite quickly since pricing in the mobile-broadband market is a moving target with lots of possible tweaks. But coming out of the gate I would look for two plans — one something in the 1 GB/2 GB of data download allowed per month for $50, and an “unlimited” or “We really mean unlimited up to 5 GB per month” for $70 or $80.

Our analysis for these guesses? With a huge LTE promotion on tap for CES, where Verizon has already promised that it will show off LTE phones, tablets and portable hotspots, there’s no need for Big Red to leave dough on the table for the business-professional audience that will be its first customers for 4G data services. The $70 or $80 per-month charge will likely be sold as a “premium” or “3G plus” service, and at $10 to $20 above the current average 3G data charge that’s a justifiable expense.

Possible surprises include perhaps some sort of prepaid data plan, but with the cost of the devices likely to remain high (until more LTE networks appear and the manufacturing economies of scale kick in) it’s doubtful that any consumer would find it worthwhile to buy an “unlocked” LTE device for $500 or $600 just so they don’t have to sign a 2-year contract. The first adopters for LTE 4G already have a mobile-data component locked in to their monthly communications budget, so contract don’t scare them. Though we aren’t expecting one for the initial launch, a 4G LTE portable hotspot would really rev up Verizon’s iPad campaign and give it another tool to bludgeon poor AT&T with.

(Follow me @paulkaps on Twitter for live tweets during the press conference call. Guaranteed to entertain if you are a 4G kinda geek.)

Just in time for the Monday-after-Thanksgiving shopping spree, Clearwire and Sprint are officially launching their WiMAX wireless broadband services in the Los Angeles area on Monday, Nov. 29, a couple days earlier than previously promised. The companies are also making services available in several other major markets, including Miami and Cleveland, while also confirming that WiMAX services will go “live” in the San Francisco market on Dec. 28.

The little-bit early LA launch wasn’t any secret if you are at all tuned in to the 4G marketing scene, since just about every Sprint employee who is on Twitter (and there are a bunch of them) was making Thanksgiving weekend noise about free 4G food truck promotions in Los Angeles on Monday. Not hard to guess what that was going to be all about, and the press releases from both Sprint and Clearwire are already live.

Your intrepid roving WiMAX service tester was actually in the LA basin over this holiday, but a couple tests in the Santa Clarita/Venice area yielded no successful 4G connections, so maybe the network isn’t built out all the way to the Grapevine just yet. (Indeed, a quick glance at Clearwire’s excellent and accurate coverage maps shows that the network coverage for now stops around Burbank on the north side.)

One of the more curious items in the blizzard of announcements and releases is Clearwire’s press release on the availability of retail Clear brand services in Miami, a market the company previously said it might delay or not offer retail services in as part of its self-imposed budgetary slowdown (ed. note: see update below). Could it be that a financial agreement has been reached between Clearwire and its majority owner Sprint, or some other potential or existing investors? We have reached out to Clearwire for more info and will keep you all posted. Sure there is more news to come later this week.

With services now in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Miami, along with (finally!) the availability of Sprint-branded services in Washington, D.C., the Sprint/Clearwire team has claimed a few more “4G firsts” in those “NFL cities” that Verizon is targeting with its still-forthcoming launch of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services. And to try and entice more folks to sign up Clearwire is now heavily into product discounts and promotions like its 80 percent off Thanksgiving sale on its Clear Spot 4G mobile router, advertising it for just $20 — the kind of subsidization the company once said it didn’t ever want to provide. Not that we think it’s a bad idea — always best to do anything to grab a customer win while you can.

UPDATE: With a 4G-speed email reply, Clearwire reps clarified our Miami question above, noting that Clear retail stores will not be opening in South Beach but that customers can still buy Clear goods and services online via Clear.com.

While the Verizon LTE commercial video we posted earlier was heavy on the dramatic effects and light on the details (to be fair, Verizon has said it will announce pricing and plans for LTE… when it launches), the folks over at Sprint have also been busy on the 4G video front, highlighting the recent market launches in New York and Los Angeles with some promo clips that actually offer a bit of meat for the techno-geek in us all. Our favorite so far is this one from New York, where Sprint actually shows off some picocell antennas, the type of video we like a lot.