Sidecut Reports

We have to say we are pleasantly surprised and quite appreciative of having uber-blog Engadget pick up our scoop on the Clearwire WiMax/Wi-Fi modem from last week’s Clearwire launch in Portland, Ore. We have to say we agree with Engadget’s take on the coming device, that it’s “a brilliant design move” from Clearwire and its partners. Like Engadget, we expect this device to be a big hit. Bet the kids at Portland State figure out quickly how to hook up a bunch of iPod Touches and leave the coffeeshops behind.

For Engadget readers finding us for the first time, in addition to our newsy blog Sidecut Reports produces long-form reports on WiMax, including our omnibus WiMax Market Report, which provides exhaustive detail about what WiMax is, and how operators in the U.S. plan to deploy the technology, with full details of last year’s mega-merger that created the “new” Clearwire. New for 2009 is our WiMax Focus Research Service, which provides monthly reports on specific WiMax-related business topics. (Blog reader hint: see if you can find our unannounced special 3-month pricing deal.)

We also have a Consumer Guide to WiMax, which explains the different ways the new wireless broadband technology might change user’s Internet access habits. It is available for free download from our site, so if WiMax is your bag by all means check out our musings at no charge at all. And thanks for stopping by! (Put our feed in your RSS Reader of choice if you want to stay up to date with all things WiMax.)

With the shareholder approval finally taken care of, the massive deal to build a new nationwide WiMax network under the Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR) name can (finally!) now begin in earnest. While those of us who have been following the events over the past year know pretty much what is on Clearwire’s immediate to-do list, for those who are playing catch-up may we suggest you order the new, updated version of our WiMax report, which includes a comprehensive study of the “new” Clearwire WiMax deal and its $3.2 billion of investment from a group that includes Google, Comcast, Intel and Time Warner Cable.

When you read the report you will learn:

– The new opportunities and challenges for Clearwire’s national focus, which is a departure from previous plans

– The motivations for Google’s $500 million investment, which go beyond business goals for search and mobility to include public-policy goals

– Why the big telcos, AT&T and Verizon, may not see WiMax as a prime competitor (even as they step up marketing and lobbying efforts to make life harder for WiMax)

– Why cable providers like Comcast may be looking to WiMax to expand their user footprint beyond its current regulatory limits

The report also contains a WiMax technical and historical backgrounder, as well as an updated look at the WiMax business opportunities for enterprises, investors and entrepreneurs in markets including mobile Internet businesses, software development, and mobile device manufacturing. Titled “Game On, WiMax! Why the “new” Clearwire gives WiMax its best chance at success in the U.S. marketplace,” the new report is available for immediate download from our website.

This new version of the report (updated this month) also includes a separate 12-page focus on Clearwire’s wireless spectrum assets, a report that was previously sold separately. Together, the new WiMax report package from Sidecut Reports represents the most up-to-date and thorough examination of the motivations behind the investments and the combination of WiMax assets from Sprint Nextel and Clearwire Corp. to form the “new” Clearwire.

So what’s next for Clearwire? We haven’t heard any details yet, but it is still our guess that there will be a big marketing push behind WiMax at the CES 2009 show in Vegas in early January — Sin City, after all, is where Clearwire is supposed to be launching one of its WiMax networks soon, so it would seem to be a great place and time to tell the world more about the new way to use wireless broadband.

Between now and then, we are supposed to see Clearwire/Xohm networks go live in Chicago and Washington, D.C., two cities already linked somewhat historically this fall. Why not a doubleheader before it becomes 2009?

Just reading the Bizweek story about Motorola’s plans to build a smartphone running Google’s Android mobile OS, and the first (unanswered) question that comes to my mind is… doesn’t it make sense to put a WiMax chip in this thing?

I mean, Google is a half-billion dollar investor in the nation’s soon-to-be biggest WiMax network… Motorola is the infrastructure supplier for the biggest soon-to-be-launched mobile WiMax deployment in the U.S. … just makes sense to think there will be a WiMax chip in there, no? Not that it would surprise us if we heard more about all this at CES.

No idea if it is true, maybe the Android guys know more?

Maybe I should have added a “fourth problem” to my previous post on GigaOM about the challenges facing Google’s Android open-source mobile OS: The inherent slowness of anything that touches the mobile carrier marketplace, a theory Om spells out in no uncertain terms with his post today about new delays for the launch of Android-based devices.

Since Sprint is mentioned in the WSJ story as one of the carriers asking for more features, it might mean that devices taking advantage of the new Clearwire WiMax network will be delayed as well. Readers of our WiMax report, of course, were already expecting this lag since our analysis of the situation sees the big-scale marketing push for WiMax taking place early in 2009, most likely with kickoffs at the CES show in Vegas.

So are Android slowdowns a minus for WiMax? Maybe, but with multiple delays in other parts of the infrastructure, it seems like Google and Android interfaces should arrive at pretty much the same time as other mobile devices being tailored for the Clearwire WiMax launch. We are hearing noise about a big, big, big marketing campaign fueled by more Intel dollars, so stay tuned for more on Android, WiMax and mobile broadband.

Need to know more about WiMax? Order our recently updated WiMax report, with full analysis of the “new” Clearwire deal and the motivations for investors Comcast, Google, Intel and others.

It was interesting to read last week that one of the things that convinced Comcast CEO Brian Roberts of WiMax’s viability was a demonstration of how well mobile WiMax can work, even at 50 mph.

In a report last week from Light Reading’s cable guy Jeff Baumgartner, Roberts (whose company poured just north of a billion bucks into the New Clearwire WiMax deal) said “he became a believer partly due to a Clearwire WiMax demo that served up video as he and his test group zipped down the road at 50 miles per hour.”

While we’re not sure where Roberts’ demo took place (guessing Portland, Ore.), we were similarly impressed by the Motorola-Intel mobile WiMax demo at CES way back in January. From our most recent WiMax report, here is a small snippet about the WiMax drive-by (which one of our guest editors said should have been the first part of the report, because he liked the tale so much). Remember, you can order the report and get the whole story via immediate download. But here’s the excerpt, anyway:

When it comes to Internet use, watching a streaming YouTube video clip is a pretty mundane thing these days. But when you add in a significant degree of difficulty — say, watching YouTube without interruption inside a sport-utility vehicle driving around Las Vegas at 35 mph — then you start to realize the power and potential of Mobile WiMax in a very simple and understandable way.

The aforementioned experience was facilitated this past January by Intel and Motorola, who earned no small bit of publicity at the CES show by equipping a small fleet of SUVs with internal Internet connectivity powered by Mobile WiMax. The completely un-canned demo — reporters riding in the vehicles were allowed to use the connectivity in any fashion they desired on a range of devices — showed a high degree of confidence from Motorola and Intel that even a small, hastily constructed Mobile WiMax network would perform sufficiently well.

The report goes on to describe what you might find if you drove one of those trucks about an hour away… to a small town where a big telco is quietly running a commercial WiMax network of its own… if you want the details, you know where to find ‘em.