Sidecut Reports

We haven’t seen the rumored WiMAX smartphone that will reportedly be announced by Sprint next week at CTIA, but someone who has told us recently that it’s a beauty, with a big screen tailored for on-the-go video. “It’s the new trophy phone,” our informant gushed. “Pretty darn amazing.”

It’s also probably not going to be available until sometime later this summer, so don’t go flushing those iPhones and Droids down the loo just yet. If you are looking for new wireless devices that might actually be closer to shipment at CTIA, you can join us in a hunt for end-user devices that do a better job of pulling in a WiMAX signal than your standard, naked USB dongle.

We’ve already shown you pictures of Cradlepoint’s version of a portable WiMAX/Wi-Fi router that fits into a home dock with big rabbit-ear antennas to boost signal strength; expect to hear more about that home modem as well as some others from new suppliers that try to improve a problem all wireless networks face: Getting through walls. We’ll be on the lookout for one Clearwire-ready device we’ve heard is in development that is designed for businesses, with strong outdoor antennas to grab the WiMAX signal and a built-in Wi-Fi router to run the LAN inside. Any guesses to the supplier? We should know more next week.

In our recent network report on Clearwire, the company’s chief technical officer Dr. John Saw told us that Clearwire was seeing most of its network use coming from folks who were sitting inside a building, rather than on the go. And in an interview for the same report, Motorola’s WiMAX/LTE guru Bruce Brda predicted that 2010 would see multiple new entrants in the Clearwire CPE game, as the company’s open network started to attract more players than the initial contracted suppliers. Another good guess is more home modems that include integrated support for VoIP, as Clearwire and its partners look to increase the value proposition by adding services.

With a big Sprint event scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, and a joint Sprint/Clearwire keynote on the schedule for Wednesday morning, it could be a big week for WiMAX in Las Vegas, so much different than the scene just two short years ago. Stay tuned here for more news and analysis before, at and after the show.

We’re just starting to scratch the surface of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, but from our limited-view vantage points we’ve already identified a few flash points that will no doubt be the center of much discussion at next week’s big wireless trade show in Las Vegas — including a call for freeing up 300 MHz of wireless spectrum by 2015, with 120 MHz coming from over-the-air broadcasters; and a huge move toward gathering and exposing more data about spectrum license holdings and actual wireless-service metrics, which with any hope will put a welcome end to stupid Map Wars TV ads that mess up our sports viewing.

On the spectrum front — hey we told you this stuff was important! — the battle for licensed airwaves is likely to make any past wrangling over tedious topics like net neutrality look like a preschool playground when you forsee a lobbying smackdown between the big telcos (who want more spectrum) and the broadcasters (who will fight to not give their airwaves up). Attention recent law school graduates! Best to bone up on spectral-rights history, because your billable hours will soon be needed.

More importantly for the rest of us is the plan’s welcome focus on a topic we’ve long been sore about, the fudging and obfuscating that is the norm when it comes to wireless service plans. Our quick summation of the FCC’s well-reasoned quest to standardize, collect and expose wireless service parameters: When you buy a gallon of gas, you are somewhat assured you are getting the octanes you paid for thanks to government regulations and standards on weights, measurement and quality of fuels. Consumers can choose their provider based on standardized data and pricing, market forces at their best.

In the current iteration of wireless services, we are at the stage of Put a Tiger in your tank. Cloudy descriptions of “peak” service levels and confusing data/minutes/messaging plans purposely make it almost impossible for consumers to compare services or providers. Under the Plan, the FCC would change that by establishing “technical broadband measurement standards” and by publishing actual broadband delivery data — maybe even a label (see below), like the ones that tell us how many calories are in that “healthy” toaster pastry — make it so, make it so!

We also like the bit in Chapter 5 of the report where the FCC calls for the establishment of an online spectrum license search tool (unauthorized PDF grab below) that would make our lives, and the lives of telecom researchers everywhere easier by actually letting the public know who is in control of those most precious of national assets, our electromagnetic airwaves. For this bit alone, hell yes we like the plan. As Eric Schmidt says, Onward!

(image of a proposed FCC “label” for accurate broadband service data. Slap that on yer iPhone!)

(bad fuzzy image of the proposed online spectrum license search tool)

With each passing day, we are getting closer to the planned launches of Long Term Evolution services from the leading U.S. providers, Verizon and AT&T. But since the actual ship dates are still at some undetermined future point in time, executives from those companies are caught in a bit of a no-man’s land — they need to start publicizing their 4G plans now as to not appear behind competitors, but they also don’t want to show their cards on details like pricing and availability before they absolutely have to.

What does that leave us with? With some not-so-informative interviews like the ones that have popped up in the past week or so, a couple with Verizon’s Anthony Melone and one with AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega in which the execs are let off the hook by either not being asked any tough questions, or by not actually answering the tough questions they were asked. Unfortunately for the audience of potential 4G services users, we are no more informed about LTE now than we were before the interviews, especially when it comes down to the money questions of how fast, how much, and where and when can I get it.

For Verizon, the responses by its wireless-division’s executive VP and chief technology officer “Tony” Melone are nothing but positives — in this breezy Q-and-A with Network World, the exec gets to spin everything in a Verizon fashion, with news nuggets like “I’m happy to report that we’re ahead of where we thought we’d be as far as site readiness goes.” While there’s nothing in the Network World interview that Verizon hadn’t said before, in a subsequent talk with the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) Melone is quoted as saying Verizon would have LTE handsets by mid-2011, which the story claims is “about six months earlier than the company had said before.” While both stories touch on the fact that Verizon will need to use its 3G network to support voice calls for LTE users, that’s not news to anyone who has been following LTE developments.

The fun thing to watch over the next year may be to compare the aggressively LTE Verizon with AT&T, which is downplaying its move to LTE by citing the lack of available devices. So while Verizon is chipper about having a handset by mid-2011, on the other hand you have AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega telling Fierce Wireless that it doesn’t think LTE devices will be available so soon:

With LTE, we think that there will be a lack of devices in the short-term. Our deployment is designed around those devices, so our network will come at the time when the devices are available.

What the two big providers do have in common is a desire to ditch “unlimited” data plans for their forthcoming 4G services, a problem WiMAX providers like Clearwire aren’t facing. While we’ve already talked about AT&T’s attempts to promote pay-per-bit plans, Verizon’s Melone echoed Verizon CTO Dick Lynch by calling for an end to all-you-can-eat data plans (which, as Karl Bode over at DSL Reports notes, Verizon has actually never offered). Quoting from the Wall Street Journal story:

Plans offering “as much data as you can consume is the big issue that has to change,” Mr. Melone said.

Looking forward to hearing more about LTE plans at CTIA!

Another day, another stupid round of “Maps vs. Apps” commercials between AT&T and Verizon. I admit to liking the first pass, but this is all getting really stupid now, isn’t it? And while it may seem like the two big telcos are only kneecapping each other, in reality this whole back-and-forth is one prolonged insult to the prospective-customer public. We, the customers, are no better informed about real network performance now than before all this started. So what’s the point?

How about this idea: If you, Verizon and AT&T, really want to prove whose network is the best — instead of these dumb commercials, how about plowing all that ad-agency cash into producing live, searchable databases with actual network deployment data — simple stuff, like number of cell towers and channels per zip code — and we’ll take it from there. Trust me, there’s enough smart and interested folks out there who would probably have a searchable Google map with the numbers ready in a day or so. Then we could all really tell, square mile by square mile across the U.S., whether the red network or the blue network was truly the best in the land.

Who knows? Maybe in some places it’s Sprint (yellow?) or T-Mobile’s pink that should take the honors. But we won’t know until one carrier has the guts to step up and stop pushing out crap and instead points at the scoreboard. Any takers?

Our second quarterly report on all things Clearwire, the Clearwire NTK October 2009, is now live on the site and ready for download for the low, low price of just $4.95 — that’s correct, four dollars and ninety-five cents. What do you get for five bucks? Here’s a small sampling:

In the October 2009 Clearwire NTK report you will learn:

– Why the Atlanta and Las Vegas market launches, and follow-on launches in smaller cities, have helped Clearwire move from a will-they-ever-arrive to a serious competitor in U.S. broadband markets;

– Why Comcast’s decision to start reselling Clearwire services may have helped Clearwire’s stock price more than double from March to August;

– Why Clearwire is offering discounts and service-price promotions, due to competition from cellular-based offerings like Apple’s iPhone 3 GS;

– Why the cool, small and portable Samsung Mondi mobile Internet device is overpriced and unsuited for Clearwire’s current target market;

– Why Clearwire’s vast spectrum holdings may (finally) help put an end to the aimless speculation about whether or not the company will be able to attract enough capital to finance its aggressive buildout;

– Plus, fun photos from the Las Vegas launch!

There’s more of course, and we’ll have some report excerpts this week as well as excerpts from the behind-the-scenes interviews and research we did on all things Clearwire since our last report back in June. The new report is available for immediate download from www.sidecutreports.com for $4.95. Order your copy today!