Sidecut Reports

The one thing missing from an otherwise excellent breakdown of AT&T’s iPhone woes by Wired today is a detailed explanation of why Ma Bell’s antiquated backhaul infrastructure and lack of available wireless spectrum are the main reasons why AT&T couldn’t cope with the iPhone data demands.

We’ve heard all about how the unprecendented data surge caught AT&T unawares, even though its top executives once claimed that handling the iPhone’s demands wouldn’t be a problem. A couple years later, and the company still hasn’t gotten things right. Don’t shareholders, investors, partners and customers demand a better explanation than a vague promise to move heaven and earth to fix the problems? How long will such data-free answers suffice?

We’ll know more when AT&T holds its quarterly conference call this Thursday — as in, we’ll know if Ma Bell is going to provide real answers, or perform more duck and hide.

Do end users of wireless services really care how their network is performing? Or do they just trust that their service provider will do what they say? Those questions came to mind after listening to AT&T’s John Donovan speak at the MobileBeat event Monday morning, and after reading about some new features that Clearwire has added to its network coverage maps.

Donovan, the chief technical officer for Ma Bell, is usually a straight shooter who doesn’t duck the hard questions. But Monday morning he waffled and whiffed a bit on giving the MobileBeat attendees some hard facts to chew on. When asked what specifically might be causing bottlenecks in AT&T’s wireless networks, Donovan didn’t provide any specific answer but did pledge that AT&T would “move heaven and earth” to stay in front of the growing demand for mobile data.

After his talk, we tried to ask Donovan for some updated statistics on matters like AT&T’s previous pledges to fix its wireless backhaul problems — but Donovan declined to answer, claiming such matters would be discussed on AT&T’s upcoming financial conference call. We’d like to give AT&T and Donovan the benefit of the doubt here, but with recent news about how its main partner Apple’s iPhones don’t accurately display the signal they are supposedly receiving, you would have to put Ma Bell’s credibility at about a one-bar level right now.

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Want to try Clearwire’s WiMAX wireless broadband service while you’re in Vegas for CTIA? Move now and reserve yourself a modem or modem-and-pocketspot combo from local provider Cheetah, which is teaming up with Clearwire to offer WiMAX rentals for as little as $13.99 a day, or $34 for 3 days, a program that lots of folks took advantage of during CES.

So instead of paying exorbitant hotel fees for slow, shared DSL or clogged Wi-Fi — or taking a crapshoot on what will likely be mega-crowded 3G airwaves — you can instead have a mobile connection of between 3 to 6 Mbps on the download side, pretty much anywhere in Las Vegas.

In addition to renting both USB modems (for laptops and netbooks) and desktop modems, Cheetah will also be renting a combo of a modem and Clearwire’s Clear Spot portable WiMAX/Wi-Fi router, which will let you connect a small workgroup of Wi-Fi devices.

Single-day prices, according to the Cheetah site, are $12.50 a day for a USB WiMAX modem, $18.99 a day for a desktop modem, and $18.99 for a modem/portable router combo. Costs per day go down with multiple days, with a 4-day basic modem total hitting $44.59, about $11.15 a day for fast broadband access.

Had a lot of calls today from folks who saw our quote in a Sprint Overdrive ad in USA TODAY — never doubt the power of the mainstream media! Since it’s been a little bit since the post that Sprint quoted, we’ve handily reprinted it here below. Enjoy!

Pocketspots Bust Out — Sprint’s Overdrive a Winner at CES (Originally published Jan. 10, 2010)

Looking back, it’s clear we didn’t do justice to Sprint’s introduction of its Overdrive mobile hot spot product — such is the problem of holding a late-night event at CES, when your audience may be distracted from blogging or writing in the moment, as they say.

Overall, it was a boffo product announcement, hitting all the big-time notes (silly comedian Frank Caliendo, star turn from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, over-the-top after-announcement party food from celebrity chef Mario Batali) but most importantly it delivered a shipping-now, easy to use and understand product in the form of the Overdrive pocketspot from Sierra Wireless, which combines 3G and 4G connectivity into an in-your-pocket package. At $99 for the device and $60 a month for the data plan — same as most standalone 3G aircards — the Overdrive is a no-brainer decision if you are a road warrior who spends any amount of time in Sprint’s already operating 4G markets.

In our brief bit of hands-on testing at CES (the Sprint folks were kind enough to lend us an Overdrive for evaluation) we found the Overdrive incredibly simple to operate — just push one button and BOOM, as Caliendo would say in his trademark John Madden imitation, your WiMAX-enabled Wi-Fi hotspot was up and running. And even in the challenging airwave atmosphere of the Las Vegas Convention Center, we were able to live-Tweet the FCC chairman’s talk, via the Overdrive sitting in our suit jacket pocket. Nice.

Not to be outdone, pocketspot veterans Cradlepoint were showing their latest wares in a suite in the Wynn — while not yet available the company’s “Project Tablerock” mobile hotspot with docking station will likely be an extremely attractive choice for Clearwire users, since it features a portable WiMAX modem that becomes your home modem when you drop it into its two-antenna charging/docking station.

According to Cradlepoint folks who showed us the Tablerock unit, the docking station antennas give the unit a significant reception boost — never a bad thing when it comes to wireless connectivity. Look for the Tablerock and maybe more (!) pocketspot modems for Clearwire and its partners as the first quarter of 2010 comes to a close. (Bad phone-cam picture of Overdrive and Tablerock side by side follows.)

Sprint’s Overdrive by Sierra Wireless, left, and Cradlepoint’s Tablerock, in the wild at CES.

Having missed this week’s quarterly earnings call from Sprint, we checked in on the always-reliable Seeking Alpha transcript to see if Dan Hesse and crew had any kind words for their WiMAX efforts, via the network run by Clearwire. Though Sprint didn’t release any 4G subscriber numbers — as we’ve said before we think honesty (even if the count is low) is the best policy — Hesse did drop some foreshadowing that should make 2010 a busy year in terms of WiMAX market and device launches.

Here are a few 4G-related bon mots from Hesse’s remarks during the Q & A to pass on:

– a reiterated promise for a hybrid 3G/4G device that looks and feels like a phone, shipping in 2010

– new markets that cover roughly four times as many potential customers as the markets Clearwire and Sprint enabled during 2009

– continued no-data-limit contracts for the WiMAX part of any service equation

After saying that the WiMAX/3G phone would “make a big difference,” Hesse added:

So internally we call 2010 the year of 4G. It’s going to be the year that we’re the only game in town and it’s a combination of we need to get more markets turned up and we need to get a better device lineup and then we think we can really start to show some sizable progress in that regard.

We should hear more about markets when Clearwire reports its Q4 numbers Feb. 24. Publicly the company has said 2010 will see launches in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Houston and others… check back after the Mobile World Congress LTE love-fest to hear more about where you can find live 4G services, this year. And not LaTEr.

Thanks again to Seeking Alpha for the call transcript.