Sidecut Reports

LAS VEGAS — Any doubts that this year’s Consumer Electronics Show would be all about 4G wireless were eliminated the morning before the official show opening, when AT&T used the backdrop of a developer conference to announce a new, accelerated deployment schedule for its Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G network and to show off new LTE smartphones from Motorola, HTC and Samsung that are scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2011.

AT&T’s somewhat unexpected LTE announcements came a day before Verizon’s well-promoted LTE marketing blitz, which will begin with a CES keynote kickoff from company majordomo Ivan Seidenberg who is scheduled to announce a blitz of LTE smartphones, tablets and assorted devices and partnerships. Sprint, whose Clearwire-powered WiMAX 4G network is already up and running in Las Vegas, is expected to provide more details on new 4G devices, and “4G” newcomer T-Mobile also has a network press conference scheduled for Thursday here in Las Vegas.

While AT&T had been skeptical last year that LTE products and services would be available in 2011, that tune had changed significantly when a very excited Ralph de la Vega (president and CEO of AT&T Mobility) bounded onto the stage at the Palms Casino and told attendees that AT&T would launch LTE services “by the middle of this year.”
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The official word from WiMAX partners Clearwire and Sprint is that their 4G services went “live” in the Central Valley nexus of Sacramento today, but the real news is that right here in River City, aka Sidecut’s home town of San Mateo, our loaner 4G modem saw the WiMAX network… but ultimately couldn’t connect.

The WiMAX tease — something we have seen before in under-construction Clearwire markets, where you can get a signal from a tower but the authentication/etc process does not complete — is a good sign that Clearwire is intent on delivering services to its two big remaining markets for 2010, namely the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles. While we are pretty confident that something positive will shake out of the whole Clearwire/Sprint/board-level funding dance currently underway, it probably behooves both partners to make sure that San Francisco and LA launch on schedule, if for no other reason than to maintain the WiMAX market-number superiority over the planned LTE blitz on the way from Verizon.

While other industries may be winding down the promotional activities as the holiday season looms, we expect that the 4G marketplace will see a busy end of the calendar year, building to a peak of activity at CES. Sidecut just booked our suite of rooms for the big hoedown — see you there, 4G fans.

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.

P.S.: Our always reliable pal Maggie Reardon covered the Sprint event for C/Net, tapping away at her laptop while everyone else ate Batali’s food.