Sidecut Reports

There’s a lotta love between Intel and Nokia today, with promises for more-interesting mobile devices that combine the two companies’ singular strengths. But conspicuous by its absence was any mention of WiMax in the press release, perhaps because when it comes to Nokia WiMax is a bit of the red-headed stepchild.

As followers of the U.S. WiMax market know, Nokia was one of the most aggressive backers of WiMax early on — its WiMax tablet for the then-Xohm network was ready last April, way before Sprint and then Clearwire could get their act together to actually offer services the Nokia device could access. By the time Xohm finally launched last year in Baltimore, the Nokia folks had soured so much on WiMax that they couldn’t even summon a single knowledgeable exec to talk about the tablet at last fall’s CTIA show in San Francisco. Not too surprisingly, soon thereafter Nokia ditched its WiMax tablet, started singing the praises of LTE and started calling WiMax nasty names, a messy breakup if there ever was one.

But is there still hope that Nokia will come back to the WiMax pack? Even after all the ugliness Nokia is still listed as a valued partner on Clearwire’s website, which is either some oops-forgot-to-update-the-website or a contractual thing that leaves the door open for Nokia to come back. If the new Intel partnership pushes Nokia back into the WiMax device business that’s good news for Clearwire and its customers, who don’t have too many devices to pick from right now. It’s worth watching, but for now all remains quiet on the Nokia WiMax front.

Funny moment from CTIA — when the Clearwire folks showed up at the bar we were at, I tried liberating them of the Clear Spot router they brought with them.

Didn’t get away with it. Next time I won’t have a photographer friend watching so closely.

Headlines without wires! Catching up on some good stories from the past week, and glad we use cable service and not AT&T-backed fiber here in northern Silicon Valley:

McCaw: WiMax key to cable’s future: Clearwire’s co-chairman and wireless uber-dude tells the Cable Show attendees why WiMax is the shizz.

Samsung Intros WiMax MID at CTIA: We had a phone-camera photo of this one — but here are some more details on why Samsung sees the need for devices, devices, devices.

Qualcomm May Slow LTE: Will chip issues keep Verizon from having anything other than laptop dongles when it tries to launch LTE later this year?

Clearwire, Intel, Google, Cisco to build Silicon Valley test network: Finally, some 4G wireless for Silicon Valley! Now we have a new place to test our loaner dongle from Sprint.

Sidecut Reports had more than a few geek moments at an incredibly busy CTIA this week, the last part of which was a test drive of a small mobile Long Term Evolution (LTE) network that Motorola built for the show. While you will have to wait until next week for us to pull together some deep thinking on what the show meant for the leading 4G technologies, here’s a quick look at the LTE drive courtesy of Motorola (and hat tip to Mari Sibley for posting it for all to consume).

Some more geek info for those who like it:

– The LTE network consisted mainly of two antennas working in the 700 MHz spectrum range, which is the spectrum slice that will be used for LTE by Verizon and AT&T in the U.S. Though there was some interference (since the antennas were basically side-by-side on the LVCC roof, not an optimal deployment), the network performed pretty much as expected, allowing video streams to run while the bus cruised down Paradise Road in front of the convention center.

– One interesting aspect of LTE at 700 MHz was the reflection aspect — according to the Moto folks in the demo bus, the physics of 700 MHz waves don’t actually penetrate buildings all that well (since the waves are quite large) but they do reflect well, allowing them to bounce around blocking objects. While concrete buildings and aluminum walls are problematic (the convention center apparently has a large aluminum part of its roof that blocked LTE signals), the Jetsons-looking and metallic-sheathed Wynn and Encore casinos provided a handy “backboard” to bounce LTE signals back from the Strip to the bus, several blocks away. Vegas geek fun!

– For a brief moment it appeared I had made LTE history by sending an email from one Gmail account to another, from a loaned iPod Touch using Wi-Fi in the truck, over the LTE link to the Moto servers in the CTIA show floor booth. But alas then another Moto person in the car said an earlier test guest had used the LTE link to order something on Amazon. Nevertheless, it was proof that LTE could work in the wild, albeit on a very small scale.

Short news stories starting to emerge about the rumored Samsung device for the Clearwire networks.

Oh wait, it’s not rumored, it’s real!

Very happy crowd of CLWR folks whoopin it up at the Lavo ultraclub at the Palazzo Monday night. Not among them: Co-chairman Ben Wolff, who we saw heading off for keynote rehearsal. Will we hear more about devices at Wolff’s keynote Wednesday?

(And hey, we’ve always liked the Palazzo!)

Photos as soon as our co-consipiritor photographer sends them from his camera…

(follow Sidecut on Twitter, @paulkaps )