Sidecut Reports

If you like the idea of smart, concerned and passionate people being involved in the government’s oversight of all matters broadband then you should welcome the news of the FCC naming University of Colorado associate professor Douglas Sicker as its new chief technologist.

News reports and releases can spell out Dr. Sicker’s considerable resume and background, but they really don’t tell you what I think is the most important attribute Sicker will bring to the FCC, namely his passion for good technology and finding the best solution. Though we’re not close friends, I can attest from several meetings with Dr. Sicker at confabs like the old PFF Aspen Summits and at the wonderful Silicon Flatirons events in Boulder that he is not just knowledgeable about complex legal and technical matters in the communications world, he is incredibly enthusiastic about finding the best answers — making him a perfect fit to be the FCC’s CTO.

Sicker’s appointment is just the latest in a string of smart-people moves from CU to the government, following Phil Weiser’s jump to the DOJ and the impressive idea of a new technical advisory group led by CU telecom legend Dale Hatfield. Congrats to all, especially to Dr. Sicker. Looking forward to great results, soon!

Welcome to the June, 2009 installment of our “Clearwire Need To Know,” or Clearwire NTK, Research Series. The NTK Series provides quarterly updates on all things related to Clearwire Corp.’s nascent WiMax services, including market launches, pricing schemes, WiMax device availability and recent business deals from the company building a nationwide WiMax network.

The Clearwire NTK reports are designed to give anyone interested in Clearwire the most thorough and up-to-date package of news, analysis and short-term outlooks available, in a format designed for easy reading. Much more comprehensive than short blog posts — and much more timely and economic than thousand-dollar traditional analyst reports — our Clearwire NTK reports are “right-sized research” for busy professionals who want to stay as current as possible on all things Clearwire. If you are interested in Clearwire, here is everything you NEED TO KNOW, ready for you to order and download directly from our site.

Topping out at just over 3,000 words — like those good old feature stories that most tech publishers don’t have the space or author experience to provide any more, each of our Clearwire NTK reports are available in form factors designed for your convenience, from PDF downloads for your desktop, laptop or netbook, or in formats suitable for reading on your Kindle bookreader or iPhone.

All NTK reports will be priced at just $4.95 — that’s no typo, but yes, Four dollars and ninety-five cents. So for less than the price of a beer at a baseball game, anyone interested in Clearwire — from investors to partners to resellers, competitors and most importantly, end users — can have the right information you need, right now, at the right price. Order your report now!

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Anyone who’s followed broadband policy matters knows that the FCC’s previous attempts to define what broadband is and how much of it is around has pretty much been a joke. Now that the Bush Administration’s promise of broadband everywhere by 2007 is seen as nothing but a hollow promise, politicians are waking up to the fact that it would be a whole lot better if this country had an actual strategic plan for advancing broadband deployment.

But as Karl over at DSL Reports so wonderfully points out, relying on the current incumbents to draft that plan may not be such a good idea. Our friend Drew Clark, who is trying to build a broadband census of his own, also weighs in on the current kerfluffle.

(Hat tip to Stacey H at GigaOM for the link.)

It’s 84 PDF pages long, filled with attractive photos of fiber-optic cable as well as informative graphs, tables and statistics about broadband usage, pricing and geographical coverage. But without any active buy-in from players with skin in the game — meaning top legislators and the biggest communications providers — the California Broadband Task Force’s recent report is a massive waste of our time, offering a Fantasyland blueprint for a broadband nirvana that will likely never come to pass.

Why? Because without a political or private-sector champion, the task force’s guidelines will remain just that — guidelines — and will leave us here on the Left Coast no closer to better broadband then we were before the politically and economically correct assemblage of folks embarked on their year-long study of the obvious. Perhaps the well-researched topics and well-intentioned recommendations can become a starting point for real implementation plans, and if so, then the staffers and executive assistants who did the real work are to be commended for at least getting the ball rolling. But the reality of the situation — specifically the state’s current billions in budget deficits — says that without any active backers, the broadband plan won’t be anything more than a fancy-looking report for the foreseeable future.

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