Sidecut Reports

Not sure what to make of this report in the Wall Street Journal (via Dow Jones newswires) tonight about a rumored $100 million WiMax equipment deal between gear vendor Alvarion and WiMax service provider Clearwire.

According to the Journal report — which is using as a source a report written in Hebrew in a Tel Aviv-based newspaper — Alvarion has signed a deal with Clearwire, which if true would be a serious bump in revenue for Alvarion, which just posted $68 million in revenue for its last fiscal quarter. But near the end of the report an analyst says there is no deal with Clearwire, and says instead it may be with rural WiMax providers who have stimulus-funds backing.

Well, they can’t both be right. What’s with those analysts, anyway?

We have calls and emails all around and will of course update this one whenver we hear more. The thing is, either version is believable — though Clearwire hasn’t used Alvarion in any of its present deployments, it’s not a stretch to think that there might be room under the big WiMax tent for some Alvarion contracts, especially in the smaller markets Clearwire says it will deploy this year and next. The rural-telco route is also believeable, since Alvarion has a lot of history in that market, there is interest from rural folks for WiMax, and Alvarion’s gear is stimulus-fund certified.

No matter who it’s with, if Alvarion is pulling down a $100 million deal for infrastructure gear that’s a good sign that investors are ready to bet with dollars on WiMax becoming real in the U.S. Maybe competition isn’t dead after all.

Looks like rural WiMax provider DigitalBridge Communications has found some new friends in the rural telco business, judging by a couple of announcements today from both Digital Bridge and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), which represents some 1,400 rural electric and telephone utilities across 48 states.

The twin announcements — an unspecified amount of funding by NRTC into DigitalBridge, and an agreement under which DigitalBridge will participate in WiMax rollouts by NRTC members — seem squarely focused on helping rural operations get so-called “shovel-ready” projects in line to grab some of the $7.2 billion in rural broadband stimulus funds that the government will spend by September 2010.

As we dig for more information, two things jump out of these agreements: One, that DigitalBridge could secure any further funding at all in the current economy speaks volumes of the investors’ confidence that WiMax is a technology worth betting on. And two, by joining forces with the NRTC, DigitalBridge becomes a trusted supplier to all those rural telcos who might be applying for the stimulus funds — gaining the kind of access and marketing reach that a small operation like DBC might not have been able to quickly secure on its own.

Though small, DigitalBridge is well known in WiMax circles for its WiMax installations, including mobile WiMax services in Jackson Hole, Wyo., that were arguably “the first to market” in the U.S., beating the Baltimore and Portland launches from Sprint/Clearwire. With this deal, it appears that DigitalBridge is getting more ambitious with its WiMax rollout plans; we look forward to hearing more from CEO Kelley Dunne soon.