Sidecut Reports

In news announcements today cable giant Comcast announced that it would start reselling Clearwire’s WiMax services, a business move they promised earlier this year.

From the press release, the main pricing plan for the service (which they are calling Comcast High-Speed 2go™) is a combo of wired cable broadband and local Clearwire WiMax for $49.99, or cable plus a hybrid 3G/4G card for $69.99:

The $49.99 Fast Pack Metro service includes Comcast’s 12 Mbps home Internet service, a free WiFi router for mobility and extended coverage in the home, and 4G service that will provide up to 4 Mbps download speed when customers are on the go. For an additional $20 per month, consumers can upgrade to the Fast Pack Nationwide service that includes the same services plus nationwide 3G mobile network access.

Though we haven’t yet heard the full details from Comcast it appears the cable company will be offering its customers a version of the Sprint 3G/4G hybrid card that allows for access to both Clearwire-hosted WiMax services where they are available and Sprint’s 3G cellular network where they’re not. Like Sprint’s reselling plan Comcast will make these services available in markets where Clearwire launches, which include Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas/Fort Worth this year among others.

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I really like the thinking behind the big 3G network test compiled by our old pal Mark Sullivan over at PC World, but I just wish Mark and the team had gone further and asked more questions about how robust the big providers’ 3G networks really are.

The big question that goes unanswered by this and other tests is asking how well these networks are built to handle increasing numbers of users. Will network crunches like the now-famous SXSW debacle become more commonplace as more users turn on their iPhones? Unfortunately, the PC World review seems a little too cautious and perhaps advertiser-sensitive, leaving a feeling of incompleteness after wading through all six pages and the assorted charts.

You can see some nibbling at the edges — in good objective journalistic fashion Sullivan shows that having a lot of bars on your phone means pretty much nothing when it comes to determining actual potential service speed. Though Sullivan and his team found that all the providers pretty much hit their advertised promises of speeds and reliability, he also notes that the terms of service are worded so loosely that the bar isn’t set too high:

Do wireless providers deliver the connection speeds they promise for their 3G networks? In our tests, on average, they did. However, the services promise speeds within a wide range–if they provide a low end to the range at all–due to the wide variability of network performance from day to day and from neighborhood to neighborhood. So in practical terms, these ranges don’t represent much of a commitment to consumers.

On the minus side, it doesn’t appear that Sullivan and his team were able to get any real input from the providers — there is a huge self-serving quote from an AT&T rep that essentially tries to argue that AT&T tests its network itself and everything is just fine, thanks for asking. (And you wonder why the tech press doesn’t trust Ma Bell!) What we would like to see, of course, is more thorough questioning, along the lines of whether or not AT&T and Verizon actually have adequate spectrum to really launch the so-called 4G services they are planning. Maybe in the next study!

It’s no secret that service providers of all stripes are lining up to grab their share of the government stimulus funding pie directed at broadband deployment. Our friends at DigitalBridge Communications got some prime-time buzz the other night, when CBS Evening News stopped by for a video look:

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The money quote from Kelley Dunne, CEO of DigitalBridge, whose new ambitious plans are part of the rural broadband rollout: He says the company has about 150 applications out there, seeking $40 to $50 million in funding. Good news for the WiMax industry if the applications go through, adding more to the pig-pile of government funding for WiMax rollouts.

The press release just hit the Internets — Alvarion’s mysterious $100 million WiMax gear deal is with planned rural WiMax provider Open Range Communications, and not Clearwire as previously rumored.

According to Ashish Sharma, Alvarion vice president for corporate market development (and apparently handler of all late-night phone calls), the deal could eventually be in excess of the stated $100 million total over its planned five-year length — but even at the stated $100 million, it’s a big win for Alvarion, which just posted $68 million in revenues for its latest quarter. Though Open Range was all over government funding before anyone even dreamed of big telecom stimulus bucks, there are still a lot of questions in the industry whether Open Range is all hat, no cattle as they sometimes say out West.

While Open Range’s promises and strange makeup — government funding and a non-standard deal to obtain spectrum — have made for a lot of industry head-scratching, the Alvarion deal (which calls for radio equipment, customer premise gear and systems integration) seems to put some meat on the Open Range skeleton, so to speak.

As we said earlier, any $100 million deal is a good one for the WiMax industry, no matter which provider is paying the bills. But until and unless Open Range actually starts delivering on its rural broadband promise (Sharma said services are supposed to be available before the end of the year) this one is still probably better marked as incomplete.

Not sure what to make of this report in the Wall Street Journal (via Dow Jones newswires) tonight about a rumored $100 million WiMax equipment deal between gear vendor Alvarion and WiMax service provider Clearwire.

According to the Journal report — which is using as a source a report written in Hebrew in a Tel Aviv-based newspaper — Alvarion has signed a deal with Clearwire, which if true would be a serious bump in revenue for Alvarion, which just posted $68 million in revenue for its last fiscal quarter. But near the end of the report an analyst says there is no deal with Clearwire, and says instead it may be with rural WiMax providers who have stimulus-funds backing.

Well, they can’t both be right. What’s with those analysts, anyway?

We have calls and emails all around and will of course update this one whenver we hear more. The thing is, either version is believable — though Clearwire hasn’t used Alvarion in any of its present deployments, it’s not a stretch to think that there might be room under the big WiMax tent for some Alvarion contracts, especially in the smaller markets Clearwire says it will deploy this year and next. The rural-telco route is also believeable, since Alvarion has a lot of history in that market, there is interest from rural folks for WiMax, and Alvarion’s gear is stimulus-fund certified.

No matter who it’s with, if Alvarion is pulling down a $100 million deal for infrastructure gear that’s a good sign that investors are ready to bet with dollars on WiMax becoming real in the U.S. Maybe competition isn’t dead after all.