Sidecut Reports

Lost a little bit in the heated run-up to next week’s highly anticipated introduction of (maybe!) the next model iPhone from Apple is the big question: How exactly are the three major cellular carriers in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint, going to balance their “4G” network promotions with a phone that will probably be called the iPhone 5? Which will, as most expect, not even run on a 4G network but on a 3G one to boot?

Our guess — they will ignore the comparisons completely, and continue to push the 4G term in marketing while selling iPhones as fast as they can. While Verizon and AT&T already are doing this dance, you can put Sprint into this equation too, should Big Yeller finally get the iPhone in its stores as is also rumored. So far this year it seems like consumers literally aren’t buying the carriers’ 4G pitches, as witnessed by Verizon’s last fiscal quarter when Big Red sold just 1.2 million 4G devices but activated 2.3 million iPhones.

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Was there some other tablet announced today? For those early birds who bought the Motorola Xoom from Verizon back in February, your LTE upgrade — which was supposed to happen in 90 days — is now available. The official website is here. Our take that Verizon’s LTE network is still a work in progress, which we still think is true, is here. Discuss.

Remember our series of stories on AT&T’s plans to build a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) network to beef up cell coverage in the Silicon Valley town of Palo Alto? According to Ma Bell’s chief technology officer John Donovan, that plan has recently received approval from the city council, which means that AT&T will likely start putting up some of the small antennas perhaps as early as in a month or so.

“We’ve got a bunch of designs [for antenna deployment] to finalize, but construction [of the network] should start early next month,” said Donovan, when we asked him about the DAS project when he was in town last week for the opening of AT&T’s Foundry innovation center in Palo Alto. Donovan, who is overseeing a big strategic move toward more DAS deployments by AT&T this year, lauded his team for cutting through red tape and getting the Palo Alto plan from idea to reality in less than 2 years.

If you are unfamiliar with DAS it may be because it has traditionally been used to improve cell signals inside buildings — say large office buildings or big sheltered spaces like hotels, convention centers or casinos — where people want to use their mobile devices but may be hindered by walls and ceilings. But with some new outside antenna designs (like AT&T’s test model that we photographed in San Mateo earlier this year) providers like AT&T are looking into building outdoor DAS networks to supplement areas where cell coverage is poor, like the leafy residential neighborhoods of Palo Alto.