Sidecut Reports

Since we couldn’t make it to Aspen this year to participate in the expected discourse on one of our favorite topics — network neutrality — we here at Sidecut Reports humbly offer our “Top 10″ list of net neutrality influencers, the people leading the debate into 2009, what we are calling Phase II of the net neutrality deliberations.

With no further ado, the drumroll please:

SIDECUT REPORTS PRESENTS
THE NET NEUTRALITY TOP 10 INFLUENCERS

The movers and shakers in the net neutrality debate, as of August 2008:

1. Jim Cicconi, AT&T — Still the man with the most pawns and the best grasp of the board.

2. Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman — A lame duck, but with a few big quacks left.

3. Rick Whitt, Google — Looks like Phil Mickelson, and his company plays policy like Phil — sometimes a champion, sometimes hitting from behind the concession stand and off a tree. Capable of major victories, but still not Tiger-solid.

4. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. — Driving the House Bus. A big bus but not a tank.

5. Joe Waz, Comcast — I get knocked down, then I get up again… just like another famous fighter from Philadelphia?

6. Ben Scott, Free Press — Riding the big wave of momentum. How long can the Silver Surfer stay afloat?

7. Lawrence Lessig, Stanford – Always effective as the lone voice storming the castle; can he compromise if he is on the other side of the ruling walls?

8. Tom Tauke, Verizon – Maybe not even the real source of power at Verizon but a former congressman who knows which strings to pull. Can pull hard with Ivan Seidenberg behind him.

9. Blair Levin, Stifel, Nicolaus — If not the next FCC commissioner, he will know who it is before anyone else (and will explain why to Wall Street).

10. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. — First he has to win. Then Reed Hundt’s troops can take over.

Honorable Mention: Tim Wu, Columbia Law School; Kyle McSlarrow, NCTA; Eric Schmidt, Google; Walter McCormick, USTA; Chris Libertelli, eBay/Skype; Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge; Jessica Rosenworcel, Senate Commerce Committee; Jonathan Adelstein, FCC; Phil Weiser, University of Colorado; Preston Padden, Disney.

Need to know more about net neutrality, or why such leading influencers think that 2009 will be a big year for possible passage of net neutrality legislation? Then order our Sidecut Report on Net Neutrality, which contains complete analysis of the recent FCC decision, as well as a net neutrality timeline and interviews with all the top players in the debate.

Google is upping the ante in the ongoing White Spaces issue, announcing today a public advocacy campaign designed to put pressure on the FCC and Washington lawmakers to free up the so-called “white spaces” of wireless spectrum that exists between broadcast TV channels. While the jury is still out on whether this idea can work technically to everyone’s satisfaction, there’s little doubt that finding more spectrum for broadband communications here in the U.S. is a good idea.

While some folks like Om Malik are pointing a cynical eye at Google’s real intentions, I can’t see how opening the debate on this and other matters broadband is anything but good. If we simply listened to incumbent possessors of spectrum on why it’s too risky to try anything new, we might never have had the Wi-Fi revolution happen the way it did. And sure, Google’s Free the Airwaves idea might produce a lot more silly home-cooked video, but if it ultimately opens up another broadband pipe in this country of duopoly providers, it’s worth the effort.

And if you’re a veteran of D.C. telecom lobbying battles, you know that Google’s new group is light-years different from the telecom “front” organizations that hide their real intentions and backers; on the Google public policy blog product manager Minnie Ingersoll is pretty straightforward when it comes to Google’s motivations:

Google has a clear business interest in expanding access to the web. There’s no doubt that if these airwaves are opened up to unlicensed use, more people will be using the Internet. That’s certainly good for Google (not to mention many of our industry peers) but we also think that it’s good for consumers.

Before any of the next-generation ideas in the white spaces can take place, however, the spectrum needs to be freed up. As we noted in our recent QuickCut Report on WiMax Spectrum, there isn’t a lot of spectrum available right now at the 700 MHz frequency, which is where AT&T and Verizon are planning to launch their so-called 4G networks. So why not free up the white spaces, or at least ask more questions why not? Sure it may mean more money for Google, but in these times of pending metered broadband that seems like a weak reason to oppose the idea.

Great stuff from Declan McCullagh today over at C/Net, in a post where he skewers the ongoing fake-newspaper-editorial efforts of Comcast and others in the net neutrality debate. In case you’re not up to speed on this tactic, it’s a time-honored practice in D.C. — big lobbying money fueling so-called “grassroots” outlets who spew the company line in op-eds that never reveal the writers’ true source of information and cash.

As McCullagh points out with links, the practice works — mainly because a big bunch of journalists and bloggers are too lazy to care, and instead just snarf up whatever press release or “official” sounding thing they see, and turn it into a quick story or post. This sad example (about a supposedly grassroots group asking Congress to investigate the Yahoo-Google search deal) that McCullagh found shows that there are still too few like Declan who are willing to dig behind the scenes, and too many who rubber-stamp officious sounding material without a second glance.

Of course, that is what the astroturf sponsors are counting on. And while we do sense a softening in the net neutrality debate and more acts of cooperation, that doesn’t mean the astroturfing will end. Not as long as there are lazy folks on the front end and shills on the back end to keep the astroturf train running.

As you can tell from our spiffy new button to the right, our promised report on net neutrality — Net Neutrality Phase II: The Battle of 2009 — is now live and ready for ordering via instant download. By combining our long background of reporting and analysis of the issue with interviews of leading legislators, top policy execs from the biggest companies, as well as representatives of the leading public-interest groups, we have produced a definitive in-depth look at the network neutrality issue, which by all accounts is headed for a big year in 2009.

While I’ll get to some of the report highlights in a bit, I want to point out first that here at Sidecut Reports we have no agenda and no skin in the network neutrality game, something that makes us much different from many players in the debate. By trying to stay as objective as possible, our goal was to produce an agenda-free look at network neutrality, which we consider a vital issue in any discussion about the future of broadband, networks, and the digital economy.

So what’s in the 34-page report? Starting with the FCC’s recent order punishing Comcast for its blocking of peer-to-peer applications, our report examines all technical and political parts of the debate, and how proponents and their opponents will position themselves following the November elections. Highlights of the report include:

• Why the FCC’s recent Comcast order isn’t much more than a starting point for the “next phase” of the net neutrality debate
• Why some close observers put the odds of Congress passing some kind of net neutrality legislation “better than even” in 2009, especially if Barack Obama wins the Presidential election
• What the big telcos, AT&T and Verizon, are planning to do and say to prevent passage of any new net neutrality legislation
• How Google and consumer groups Free Press and Public Knowledge are teaming up to educate the public and regulators on why they think there is a need for baseline net neutrality rules
• How any and all outcomes might affect the investment outlook for companies from startups to large service providers
• Why the debate is getting less rhetorical and moving toward more collaboration between opposing sides

The report also contains a network neutrality historical timeline, as well as the Sidecut Reports ranking of the “top ten” individuals influencing the network neutrality debate. The new report is available for immediate download.

In case you are new to Sidecut Reports, a little background: We are an independent editorial research company that provides business professionals with deep background, up-to-the minute information, and decision-making analysis on pertinent topics that goes far beyond blogs at a price far less than that charged by traditional analyst operations. Led by longtime industry journalist Paul Kapustka, Sidecut Reports provides in-depth looks into topics at the intersection of telecommunications, the Internet and public policy. The net neutrality report is our second report, following the release earlier this year of our Sidecut report on WiMax, which looks at the current market for WiMax wireless services in the U.S.

(UPDATE: Adds Clearwire response.) As we predicted in our Sidecut Report on WiMax, the “new” Clearwire deal, with its heavy-hitter lineup of investors and their $3.2 billion in capital, was sure to attract the attention of the big telcos, namely AT&T and Verizon. In our predictions we guessed that the big telcos would turn up the heat on Clearwire any way they could, and today it looks like we were right since AT&T just filed a rather lengthy complaint with the FCC, suggesting that Clearwire’s merger application needs a bit more work.

While politely suggesting that AT&T “does not fundamentally oppose the underlying transaction,” the big telco nevertheless accuses Clearwire of not accurately disclosing the full amount of 2.5 GHz spectrum it has access to, perhaps in an attempt to escape greater FCC scrutiny. Of the several complaints AT&T has, this seems to be the most worthy, especially since (as AT&T points out), other carriers (like itself) have been held to very strict spectrum accounting methods during mergers. As AT&T says:

While AT&T does not fundamentally oppose the underlying transactions, the regulatory process must be consistent for all providers, and the FCC must subject Sprint Nextel and Clearwire to the same standard under which it reviews all other carriers.

(What that really means: Hey Kevin, slow these guys down!)

Being somewhat cynical in nature, we had asked Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff specifically about the company’s FCC filing in our recent interview with him, since it appeared even to our non-legal eyes that there was a mountain of spectrum-transfers that looked ripe for questioning. At that time, Wolff said “all the feedback we’ve gotten [on the FCC filing] is generally positive. There don’t seem to be any concerns, nothing contentious.” Wolff did say that Clearwire expected to have a “higher profile” with the new deal, and had always kept a significant presence in Washington to handle regulatory matters. “The wind is blowing in our direction,” said Wolff about regulatory issues. “We can never be too lax, but we are on the right side of the story.”

A quick parsing of some of the comments already filed on the proposed merger does find many in support of Clearwire’s intentions, including WiMax provider DigitalBridge and Voice over IP provider Vonage. In an email reply, Clearwire spokesperson Susan Johnston added: “in detailed spreadsheets and text spanning more than 300 pages, Clearwire and Sprint documented all of their spectrum holdings in minute detail and described the myriad public interest benefits of the transaction. With this filing, the FCC has all of the data and information it requires to perform any competitive analysis it might find warranted.”

Still, given AT&T’s clout with the Kevin Martin-led FCC, it should be interesting to see if and how the commission reacts to the telco’s complaint.

If there is any doubt that Clearwire might be a worthy competitor, it may make sense to read what both AT&T and Verizon have to say. In its complaint, AT&T offers the following statement:

In June 2008, Sprint Nextel Corporation and Clearwire Corporation filed at the Federal Communications Commission its application for merger approval. Our attached FCC filing shows that the combined company will become the largest holder of licensed and leased mobile spectrum of any other carrier, have a service that will be commercially available later this year, have financial backing from Google, Intel, and three of the nation’s largest cable television companies and be fully capable of substantially impacting competition in the mobile communications market.

Verizon, in a filing regarding its proposed merger with Alltel, had this to say about Clearwire:

A new competitor will soon be entering the wireless broadband market. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire recently announced a deal with cable providers Time Warner, Comcast and Brighthouse, chipmaker Intel, and google, under which Sprint Nextel’s and Clearwire’s next generation wireless broadband businesses will be combined to form a new wireless communications company. The combined company will have access to an average of 150 MHz of spectrum in the top 100 markets and an average of
100 MHz in areas outside of the top 100 markets - making it the largest spectrum holder in the Unites States. The merger of ALLTEL and Verizon Wireless will enable Verizon Wireless to compete more effectively with this significant new player. The Clearwire venture plans to serve a substantial portion of the U.S. population by the end of 2009, and must be considered a strong entrant in the mobile marketplace.

Well, if they say so!

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.

Derek Slater has a good-read post on the Google Public Policy blog today, asking “What if you could own your own Internet connection?” The idea, simply, is that homeowners (or business owners, colleges, etc.) could improve their broadband reliability and choice by financing the installation and upkeep of their own “last mile” link to the Internets.

In the case Slater cites as an example, the home-owned fiber connects to a “neutral” co-location center, where any ISP who wants to can interconnect and offer services. Again, none of this is a new idea — we remember Internet co-inventor Bob Kahn voicing a similar opinion a couple years ago — but we’re guessing such plans could gain more traction especially in rural or underserved areas that will be ignored by the fiber rollouts of big telcos and the cablecos. In Kahn’s example the goverment would buy the local loop lines from the incumbents, but that’s a minor tweak from the basic idea, which is to remove the gatekeeping possibilities the current telco- or cable-controlled situation provides.

Since the Kahn link is perhaps unreliable, here’s the money quote from my old blog at Pulvermedia:

Actually, Bob Kahn (winner of the show’s Big Brain award, hands down) trumped the whole panel and maybe the whole event with a query during the open Q&A, about whether or not it makes sense for the government to purchase the local loop infrastructure from the current owners, and then set up some kind of “open central offices,” where anyone could come in, locate servers, offer services, etc. etc.

“Call it a digital extension cord,” Kahn posited. An incredible idea — one that would pre-empt all the RBOC and cable complaints about the cost of building networks. Fine, let’s pay them for their infrastructure, and open it up for business, all open protocols and interconnects.

“If someone wanted a 10 to the Nth megabit service and someone else was willing to provide it, there could be a business,” Kahn said later when I asked him to expound.

If folks are willing to drop 3 large on a swanky cookspace, why not a few more grand for FTME, or Fiber to Me?

Even though he’s busy managing day-to-day operations for the “old” Clearwire as he also works on integration issues for the “new” Clearwire and its planned nationwide WiMax network, Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff still found time to talk to Sidecut Reports for a mid-summer update this week. In this edited transcript of our phone interview, Wolff talks about what is tops on his priority list, including Clearwire’s coming launch of Mobile WiMax services in Portland, Ore., along with an ongoing process of educating Wall Street on how and why Clearwire’s new services will be different from traditional cable, broadband or wireless offerings.

Sidecut Reports: Can you give us an update on where Clearwire stands right now? Does Clearwire have any access yet to the new investment capital, and have any integration efforts started with Sprint?

Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff: We won’t get access to the new capital until the deal closes [expected in Q4 2008]. Until we’re through with the FCC and DOJ processes, we can’t coordinate activities. We can do some planning on what the company will look like after the closing.

Sidecut Reports: Where does that leave Clearwire for the rest of 2008?

Ben Wolff: We’ll continue building out the markets we were going to build out in 2008 — Portland, Ore., Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Grand Rapids, Mich. Sprint continues to do the same thing with the markets they were targeting [Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C.]. The good thing is, they are different markets. What has become clear is that we and Sprint are building in a very similar architecture, in some cases using many of the same [infrastructure] vendors. So I don’t imagine there will be much complexity in integrating [after the deal closes].

Sidecut Reports: Will your new markets use Mobile WiMax?

Ben Wolff: Yes.

Sidecut Reports: What about your plans to upgrade your existing networks to Mobile WiMax? Is anything happening there yet?

Ben Wolff: Physically, nothing is happening yet. It’s certainly in the planning stages. Once we consolidate our spectrum with Sprint’s, that will give us enough spectrum depth to do a WiMax overlay [in Clearwire’s existing markets]. So we’ll have the ability to share infrastructure and run our legacy network side by side with a Mobile WiMax network. In Seattle, for instance, we are currently using all the spectrum currently available to us. With Sprint’s spectrum, it opens up the way for Mobile WiMax.

Sidecut Reports: What are your day to day responsibilities? It seems like there might be a split between running the “old” Clearwire and getting ready for the “new” Clearwire.

Ben Wolff: We need to continue to prove out the fact that this can be a profitable business, and that it can scale out. So I do pay close attention to operations and profits. I also spend a lot of time on the integration process — thinking about what the team will look like when we’re combined, getting all the things in place. We want to move toward Mobile WiMax and introduce the new Clearwire in one fell swoop.

Sidecut Reports: What about educating Wall Street analysts? How is that process going?

Ben Wolff: Education is important, especially in this financial climate. A lot of my job is to help Wall Street understand what is different — what the services are, what the revenue model is. It doesn’t fit into a neat convention or any one description.

Sidecut Reports: Is that a tough job?

Ben Wolff: Some analysts get it, and others just can’t get their heads around it. Some of the cable industry analysts want to compare it to residential broadband, to pigeonhole it. I think it’s a somewhat jaundiced view to say that if it doesn’t offer video, it’s going to be hard-pressed to get high enough ARPU. Then there are some wireless analysts who want to see only a national [coverage] footprint, all at once.

It’s getting some [analysts] out of their comfort level. For our new network, the overall cost structure [for infrastructure] is a lot different, and so is the idea that spectrum is what makes the [WiMax] world go around. That is an awful lot for people to try to get their arms around.

Sidecut Reports: Does the popularity of the iPhone and its 3G launch help or hurt your efforts?

Ben Wolff: I think it will help significantly in the long run. When Steve Jobs got on stage and showed the 3G iPhone downloading a National Geographic web page, they made a big deal about how it only took 21 seconds. We went out on our Portland network, using a small-screen device, and downloaded the same page in four seconds. As great as the iPhone is with its wonderful user interface and applications, it’s still dragged down by the speed of the network. It’s a great precursor, because it’s clear that customers want an Internet experience in their hand. What’s next is a network that can really support it.

Sidecut Reports: What is your take on the growing publicity around LTE, the 4G choice for AT&T and Verizon?

Ben Wolff: I want to make it clear that Clearwire is not in a technology holy war. That said, WiMax is here today and it’s our choice. But if you look at it closely, only the uplink [technology] of LTE is different from WiMax — 85 percent of the DNA is the same. I think the real [question] is what spectrum you are going to use to deploy technology. LTE is mainly a frequency division duplex (FDD) technology, and if you look globally, there’s not much FDD spectrum for use. What’s really available is time division duplex (TDD), which WiMax uses. In most of our U.S. markets we have about 150 MHz of spectrum, versus the 22 MHz of spectrum Verizon got in the 700 MHz auctions.

So technology is only half the equation. You’ve got to have a pipe that’s big enough. But really, the consumer doesn’t care if it’s LTE or WiMax. They just want a good experience at a good value.

Sidecut Reports: Speaking of value, can you talk at all about what WiMax pricing might look like?

Ben Wolff: We really can’t talk about pricing yet, but I will say that we will be able to offer a better value than 3G because we can make bits move at a better cost. What we really want is to give consumers a variety of different services — you’ll have residential broadband plans at different speeds and bandwidth, you’ll have day passes, and devices with [WiMax] chips embedded — so it’s hard to talk about what pricing is or will be.

Sidecut Reports: When will Clearwire offer those services?

Ben Wolff: We’re going to go with Portland first, and learn from there. We are looking at a soft launch before the end of the year, say early fourth quarter. We’ll see how that goes and then make a decision from a “grand opening” perspective and then make decisions about the other markets.

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.

From the looks of it, the second round of the Net Neutrality debate is going to be a lot like the first: Lots of blather and not a lot of attention paid to facts, as warring factions try to tilt public perception in their favor. Surprising? Hardly, given the stakes of the game. Disappointing? Certainly, especially for those who were hoping that there could be more consensus-building discussions instead of the he-said/she-said arguing of the past, which hasn’t really served either side well.

Today’s editorial by Richard Bennett in the San Francisco Chronicle is a case in point: While Bennett, a self-proclaimed networking expert, makes valid points about the need for regulators to closely examine the market power of Google’s search advertising deals, his emotional one-offs on several items raise two red flags: Not only are some of them inaccurate, but their almost word-for-word mimicry of similar opinions voiced recently by the major telcos, AT&T and Verizon, shows there might be more to his argument than just the concerns of an average netizen.

In recent interviews for our upcoming Sidecut Report on Net Neutrality, I was reminded once again just how good the telcos are at playing the lobbying game by synchronizing their messaging. In separate interviews at the recent NXTcomm show, the top policy execs for both big telcos — AT&T’s Jim Cicconi and Verizon’s Tom Tauke — both stressed the ideas that A) the Net Neutrality debate was started by, and mostly run by, Google; and B) that privacy concerns, especially those related to online advertising, were a much bigger problem than net neutrality, which was already being solved anyway by business-to-business solutions. Clearly, I thought, these are the new marching orders for the telco side of the issue.

Both those ideas are embodied in Bennett’s essay, in which he accuses Google of a “political head-fake,” using net neutrality to distract regulators from the privacy concerns. I would posit that you could flip that coin on its head, and say that it’s the telcos who are raising a big stink about privacy in order to try to move net neutrality to a back burner. To me, they seem like two separate issues that should be resolved on their own merits. But neither am I naive! Welcome to Net Neutrality, Round Two.

While I still hope to interview Bennett for the upcoming report — it’s clear from his writing and public testimony that he knows more about networking than your average law professor — there are several points in his column that shouldn’t go unchallenged. The first is his claim that net neutrality is a topic that “Google thrust into the political spotlight two years ago.” The reality is that Google, if anything, was late to the game and supremely unorganized in its approach to net neutrality, not really getting its act together until it hired former MCI lobbyist Rick Whitt in early 2007. If anything, it was former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre’s not on my pipes bromide that made net neutrality a front-page topic, more so than anything Google did or said.

Bennett also says Google gets a free pass from the tech press, and that despite its “squeaky-clean” image, Google also has relations with “Washington power brokers,” perhaps an attempt to sketch Google as some nefarious broker of back-room deals. I’m not sure where Bennett is reading his so-called “cheerleading” for Google — most everything I can find in searches on the topic are straightforward, balanced news accounts, with plently of growing cynicism about Google and its endeavors in things like Street View. My pal Om has been anything but a Google cheerleader, like others questioning how Google will square its open networking ideals with the exclusive partner deals that were part of its $500 million investment in WiMax provider Clearwire.

On the D.C. influencer side, all I can say is it wasn’t Google who convinced Congress to change its mind and grant immunity to telcos in their FISA-related lawsuits. According to AT&T’s Cicconi, he oversees a staff of some 700 people. Google’s Whitt, on the other hand, is one of only three Google people “on the Hill,” and he is still the only one with a focus on the FCC. So who exactly is to be feared in Washington?

You could keep picking Bennett’s essay apart — claiming Google had “largely abandoned” net neutrality earlier this year is just laughable — but at some point you just get tired of the game, and wish there was a better way. Fortunately, many of the other players on both sides seem to be eager to work together to find solutions that don’t require political endgames; today’s surprise agreement between Vonage and Comcast to work together on networking concerns is just another signal that maybe there is a better place for the debate, centered around what is reasonable network management, and how it can be achieved so that both sides feel their concerns have been considered, and become part of the implementation. Other interviews we’ve done with folks like Public Knowledge and Comcast reflected such ideas.

Given Bennett’s past calls for more technical expertise and less political interference in debates about matters Internet, it’s surprising to read that he now thinks that regulators, and not market players, should intervene. But it is pretty clear who agrees almost exactly with everything he says today.

“The carriers try to frame this as being between themselves and Google — I’m a veteran of MCI so I saw this in the ’90s,” said Whitt in our recent interview. “They came after MCI as the poster child of the CLEC side, and unfortunately, they did a pretty good job.”

Will the same game work again? That will be one of the questions we ask in our upcoming report, which unfortunately has been slowed a bit by my recent surgery. If you want an email update when it’s ready, drop me a line at kaps at sidecutreports.com and I will ping you when it’s done.

Back in February, we reported how frustrated FCC commish Jonathan Adelstein was at the pace of broadband deployment in the U.S. While we liked his idea of national broadband summits, at the time it seemed like a good idea without much behind it.

Tuesday, Google and a few of its friends got behind the idea in a big way, launching something called Internetforeveryone.org, which is clearly a place for Google and others to promote their ideas for open, more-available Internet to the masses.

Google, which explains the new endeavor on its public policy blog, is continuing its all-in push into public policy by backing the Adelstein/Lessig/Free Press idea. By holding the as yet-unscheduled summits, Google and its partners can also produce dialogue that with any luck won’t be as scripted or stilted as the FCC hearings that pass for the best discourse on public policy and broadband matters.

Since our next report (due out soon) is about network neutrality, we couldn’t agree more that the level of debate on broadband policy needs to be increased. No better time than now.

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.