Sidecut Reports

So you’ve got a shiny new Kindle, and you’re looking for some good wireless-market content to keep you informed during that cross-country flight? Look no farther, because our new report, the CLEARWIRE BUSINESS REPORT for July, 2010, is now available from Amazon.com for the Kindle — ready to download and inform you in true new-e-reader style.

Of course, the report is available from our own site in PDF format but Kindle fans are now not left out in the cold when it comes to getting up to speed on all things Clearwire.

Fresh from some major-league “live” market additions earlier this week, Clearwire on Wednesday announced an additional seven new locales for its nascent national WiMAX network services, including the minor-league baseball towns of Eugene, Ore., Visalia, Calif., Rochester and Syracuse in New York, and Tri-Cities and Yakima in the fine state of Washington, along with Merced, Calif., which is near some other minor-league towns. Most of these were what we call Clearwire “gimme” markets since they already had Clearwire’s pre-WiMAX service so the company didn’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting to switch them over to the mobile version of WiMAX that Clearwire calls “4G.”

But back to the baseball angle — I already knew there were minor league teams in Eugene, Syracuse and Rochester, and Visalia is known to anyone who followed Crash Davis. The rest I had to look up: Merced doesn’t have a team now but did once before; and it’s not a long drive up Highway 99 to visit Stockton or Fresno; Yakima sounded like a minor league town, and that was correct. Not sure if this Tri-City is the same as the one Clearwire is serving, but if so then you can enjoy 4G broadband while watching professional prospects groom their game.

Sounds like a good summer vacation — visit the Clearwire WiMAX markets, watch minor league baseball. And then in the fall, wait for the big big big league markets of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles to come online.

(Editor’s note: I just realized that of the cities added to Clearwire’s list earlier this week — Salt Lake City and Richmond, Va., also have minor-league teams, while St. Louis has of course the major-league hated by Cubs fans Cardinals. But given the relative size of Richmond and Salt Lake, I consider them “major league” when it comes to broadband market potential.)

Here’s an official list of all the current “live” markets for Clearwire’s WiMAX services (and by extension, Sprint’s 4G services as well). More to come in the months ahead.

1. Atlanta

2. Milledgeville, Ga.

3. Baltimore

4. Boise, Idaho

5. Chicago

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As we predicted in the report we released yesterday, it seems like wireless consumers better get used to paying more for the data they use. While we haven’t fully broken down the new data plans announced by AT&T Wednesday, there are a few clear caveats that aren’t necessarily good news for end-users:

You’ll need to learn how many bits you’re using. While AT&T is to be commended for altering the previous over-use penalties that could sometimes result in outrageous wireless bills for simple roaming mistakes, the new lower data caps makes it likely that more folks will bump up into the high end of their plans sometime, despite Ma Bell’s claims that 98 percent of its wireless users consume 2 GB per month or less of data. Think that total is going to go down, or up, as more smartphones and iPads get connected? We think it’s going up rapidly.

You’ll need to do a better job of predicting where and when you may want faster services. As we explain in our report about the Mobile Data Explosion, the new networks coming online now and in the next few years won’t allow the kind of simple roaming that cell phone users now enjoy for voice services. Since services like Clearwire’s WiMAX, Verizon’s planned Long Term Evolution (LTE) and AT&T’s HSPA+ are all different and will be in different cities, users will have to figure out beforehand where they will be when they want faster services.

Given that the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals today smacked down the FCC’s ham-handed attempt to impose net neutrality rules on Comcast from a couple years ago, it’s no surprise that many folks are proclaiming this to be the end of net neutrality and a blow to the Obama administration’s telecom plans.

They should know better.

All this does is mark the start of the real battle for not just net neutrality, but for control over matters broadband and beyond.

In reality, today’s decision is probably a somewhat welcome one for the Julius Genachowski-led FCC and the Obama telecom troops, since it officially removes the taint of questionable decisions led by former FCC chairman Kevin Martin from the net neutrality debate. Martin, the friend of big telcos like AT&T and Verizon, ostensibly presided over the implementation of the net neutrality “principles” back in 2005 and then the Comcast case itself. But being by all accounts a very smart guy, Martin is probably laughing out loud somewhere now, knowing that his tactics and decisions probably got the end goal he and his backers truly wanted — mass confusion around net neutrality and the FCC’s role in adjucating it.

Though we’ve sort of been off the policy beat lately, I remember asking lots of insiders about the Comcast decision after it was initially passed, and even the most pro-net neutrality types all thought it would eventually be overturned like it was today. “Good result, bad process” was the way one net neut proponent summed up the original FCC ruling. Good call.

But since Obama’s election, Genachowski and other administration types have been busy looking well beyond the Comcast case, putting in motion not only a separate net neutrality proceeding, but also developing the recently released national broadband plan, which if executed as described will go a long ways toward making net neutrality principles part of everyday regulatory practices — not by trying to define the slippery idea of net neutrality itself but by implementing a raft of actual measurable, enforceable things like truth in broadband-speed advertising and transparency in network management practices.

Should the broadband plan’s metrics-based ideas come to pass, network service providers would have a hard time hiding the kind of dubious practices that got Comcast in hot water in the first place. And just like with the health care bill, Obama and the Democrats probably have all the votes they need right now to pass new net neutrality regulations should they so desire — in fact insiders we have talked to in the big telco camps fully expect that some sort of net neutrality regulation will appear before the end of the year. But that also means they’re gearing up to fight it, if for no other reason than to keep the nuns safe from Google.

We digress. Clearly there is much more still to happen, and we’ll be watching while it does. But the end of net neutrality? In reality, a much bigger battle for the ultimate control of the nation’s networks has just begun.