Sidecut Reports

If you bet that Comcast would legally appeal the FCC’s smackdown order, you win. Om has all the details on Comcast’s legal proceedings, with some interesting mumbo-jumbo about how they are complying with the order even as they appeal it.

Since the order itself was relatively toothless, we stand by our earlier call that says the FCC’s order was only the start of the next phase of the net neutrality debate, a process that will truly begin in earnest next year when there should be new players at the FCC and in Congress, ready to rock. Of course, if you want to get caught up on who’s got the juice in matters net neutrality, or get schooled on the historical aspects and changing debate, we’ve got a report to sell you.

As promised, here is our extended interview from last week’s phone conversation with Xohm president Barry West, Sprint’s point man on all things WiMax. In this edited transcript West talks about three new markets where Sprint is already building tower sites, as well as the problems Apple’s iPhone 3G users seem to be experiencing (which didn’t surprise him). West also talks about the progress in the Clearwire-Sprint WiMax merger, the devices in the Xohm pipeline and the new network’s open architecture plans.

Sidecut Reports: With the first Xohm launch scheduled for September in Baltimore, can you give us the state of the state of the network?

Barry West: We have more than 1,000 sites on air, a month ahead of our internal target date! It is actually 1,066 sites now. And in typical fashion I am increasing the target. But we are having a bit of an internal celebration today.

Sidecut Reports: Are these sites in all the three announced markets [Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C.]?

Barry West: We’re actually working in more than three. There’s Boston, Philadelphia and Dallas/Fort Worth, we are working in all of those. Half of the sites [built so far] are in Chicago, that is our most advanced build market.

Sidecut Reports: It sounds like you have overcome the backhaul issues that delayed the initial planned launch.

Barry West: Yes. We recently did 25 sites in one day. This is one of those logistics things [putting up sites]. When you get the funnel going, it really works for you.

Sidecut Reports: Are you using Clearwire’s microwave backhaul strategy?

Barry West: Yes. When it comes to microwave [for backhaul], we like it too. We are working together, as much as the FCC and DOJ allow us to work more closely. We’re very much on a common [infrastructure] plan. And we liked their [microwave] application better than ours, so we switched.

Sidecut Reports: Is there a hard launch date you can share with us?

Barry West: We’re launching in September. Right now we’re going through a device and application testing list, and heavy testing of back-office systems. We don’t expect to have any reason not to launch. The most important thing is that the [tower] sites are built.

For the Baltimore network — I drove it last week, and we are seeing 3-to-5 Mbps speeds on the download. That’s on a small antenna, on a [PC] aircard in a laptop, so it’s working very well.

Sidecut Reports: Will that be the advertised speeds at launch?

Barry West: It’s a pretty average speed for that network overall. But it’s also very important to set the right expectations with customers. This is not a cellular network, not on day one. It’s really a hot spot the size of a city. So we have a very good coverage prediction tool — when people sign up for the service, we’ll make them go through a process where they say where they’re going to use the device. It will tell them whether there’s coverage there or not.

We never want the customer to be misled. You see a lot of quoted [wireless] data rates out there that look like they are for reception close to the cell tower, in non-loaded conditions. The reality is, you’re not going to get that. On our network we have seen download speeds as fast as 11 Mbps, close to the towers. But there’s no point of telling people 11 Mbps, because in the end you are limited by the devices. Again it’s about setting realistic expectations.

Sidecut Reports: Do the problems with Apple’s iPhone 3G surprise you?

Barry West: I’ve been predicting that for a long time. When you look at loading a network, it’s very difficult to support the kind of apps that are on an iPhone. It’s a challenge. So it wasn’t a surprise to me that they would have problems. I think 3G is really a tease technology — when the conditions are optimal, it works really well. But knowing you can only get it some times is really aggravating.

Sidecut Reports: What devices will be ready for the September launch?

Barry West: We’ll have in what we call category 1 — meaning devices that we buy, and sell through our distribution — a Zyxel modem, a ZTE modem, a ZTE USB card, and a Samsung aircard. Very shortly after launch, we should see the Nokia [wimax tablet].

Sidecut Reports: There seemed to be a lot of device vendors backing WiMax at the recent Intel Developer Forum.

Barry West: It was really nice to see the PC OEMs committed to embedding WiMax, including Dell. We have north of 20 laptops [with embedded chips] going through our labs for testing. We’re very pleased how that’s going. Embedded is a good cost structure for us. We’re also working with getting Sprint’s 3G/4G cards on the network — we’ll see those hopefully before the end of the year.

Sidecut Reports: How are you getting along with the folks from Clearwire?

Barry West: We spent the whole day yesterday working on plans for next year. It’s amazing how quickly we’ve been able to get into a routine. We are the new company — we both bring complementary skill sets in. For instance they have been in the marketplace for four years, and it’s nice to leverage that learning.

Sidecut Reports: What is the reception for the New Clearwire among the financial community?

Barry West: It’s still a very tough market from a Wall Street standpoint. When get to an analyst conference, you still can hear that the 700 MHz spectrum is better. But what about if you don’t have enough of it? Trying to explain that difference to financial types is difficult. It’s still not appreciated. But now AT&T, they of course understand the value of spectrum.

Sidecut Reports: Is there still a software developer program for your networks?

Barry West: Our business model is very open. If they wanted to build applications [for the network], then Apple, Microsoft or Google could just do it. Nokia is very proud of their brand, so they will be offering their own services. We’re encouraging that. If Vonage wanted to be higher on the QoS stack, we would help make that available even though it’s a competing product. It’s significantly different that we have the ability to do that.

We’ve been working on the open architecture, trying to draw attention and partner with people. The best thing for us is to drive a lot of traffic to this network as fast as we can.

Sidecut Reports: Can you tell us the pricing plans yet?

Barry West: I can’t tell you. But we are printing collateral marketing material now. It’s pretty exciting. There’s lots of buzzing in the building.

We hadn’t seen the Opposing Views website until Erick at Techcrunch found a page that ostensibly starts an online debate on one of our favorite topics, network neutrality. While the site does a decent job of compiling “position papers” from some of the leading public faces of the argument, it really doesn’t do much for advancing debate on the issue other than give folks who aren’t changing their minds an online place to stomp their feet and shout out how wrong the other side is.

So far, the page has all the predictable opinions from both sides of the net neutrality argument, from the predictable representatives — Free Press’s Save the Internet, Public Knowledge and the Open Internet Coalition on the “pro” side, and the Cato Institute and the telco-backed Hands off the Internet on the “con.” If you’re a newcomer to the issue, perhaps it’s useful from the learn-the-basics standpoint. But if you’ve followed the matter for more than a week, there’s not much new to learn. And while it may provoke a lot of page-views from folks who want to comment one way or the other, until the debate involves some of the issues’s true movers and shakers, nothing’s really going to move the needle.

It will be interesting to see if the net neutrality “debate” on the new site attracts any heat, especially next to the other burning questions on the home page, such as whether or not you should spank your kid, or whether it’s OK to eat meat. Doesn’t sound to me like the kind of place where rational thought can be exchanged and meaningful compromises can be reached (something that is already starting to happen in the next phase of the net neutrality debate, at least according to many of the leading influencers on the issue).

They’re whoopin’ it up at Sprint headquarters, as the Xohm WiMax folks there celebrate hitting an internal infrastructure deployment date well ahead of schedule. A confident and happy Xohm president Barry West spoke with us by phone Thursday afternoon for an update on the inaugural Xohm launch in Baltimore in September, as well as device, bandwidth and spectrum issues for both Sprint’s solo launches in 2008 and the expected merged operations in the New Clearwire for 2009.

According to West, the celebratory mood was due to the ops team getting its 1,000th WiMax base station “on the air” one full month before its internal target date. In addition to the Baltimore network, West said the number of live sites (now at 1,066) includes buildouts in Sprint’s two other previously announced 2008 launch markets of Chicago and Washington, D.C., as well as equipment being installed in Boston, Philadelphia and Dallas/Fort Worth.

While West did not divulge a launch timeframe for the new cities, he did confirm that Baltimore, D.C. and Chicago will all go live as most recently promised, with average download speeds of 3 to 5 Mbps in the network coverage areas. West also said that Sprint will have a small assortment of devices ready for the Baltimore launch, including modems from Zyxel and ZTE, as well as two devices for laptops, one a USB-attached device from ZTE and the other a PC card from Samsung. Nokia’s already announced Xohm-ready WiMax tablet, West said, should be available shortly after the Baltimore launch.

According to West, Sprint has solved just about all the problems it had faced earlier in getting the right amount of backhaul services to WiMax towers, in part by adopting some of the microwave-backhaul techniques of its imminent marriage partner Clearwire.

“It was one of those logistics things where when you get the funnel working, it really works for you,” said West about the backhaul backlog. West said Sprint’s tech teams recently added 25 live sites in a single day, supporting his belief that there will be no further delays in bringing WiMax to market.

We will have a more in-depth post covering our full conversation with Mr. West live in the next few days. In the meantime if you need to learn more about WiMax, you can order our Sidecut Report on WiMax, which provides an in-depth look at the technology and the “new” Clearwire deal.

We’re not sure yet if the Intel sport-utes will be in the house, but we have confirmed that Clearwire will have a live, working Mobile WiMax demo during the upcoming CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment show in San Francisco, Sept. 10-12.

The mini-WiMax network demo should help kick off a big month for WiMax in the U.S., with the promised launch of Sprint’s Xohm services in Baltimore and the big WiMax World show in Chicago at the end of the month. With any luck we’ll get some harder delivery dates and pricing news for both the new services as well as all the new WiMax-enabled laptops and handheld devices, some of which were unveiled at the recent Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

As we said in our previous Sidecut Report on WiMax, there’s no better way to market WiMax than to show folks its capabilities working live. (Such a demo sure convinced Comcast’s Brian Roberts to part with a billion investment bucks.) Side-by-side tests with an iPhone 3G, anyone?

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.

Just got back from a quick afternoon stop at the Intel Developer Forum, where I caught Dadi Perlmutter’s mobility keynote. Biggest news on the WiMax front was the announcement that Dell and Sony have joined the list of Asus, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo and Panasonic as OEMs who say they will ship laptops with Intel WiMax chips embedded inside.

No hard ship dates yet, but Dadi did say something about Q1 availability, which was about what we expected when the chip-ship dates slipped a bit earlier this summer. There were also some cool MIDs (mobile Internet devices) hanging out, though no WiMax connectivity for testing purposes (can you say missed marketing opportunity?).

No new WiMax network updates, though Clearwire CTO John Saw (who we interviewed for our QuickCut Report on WiMax Spectrum) did address the audience via a VoIP-teleconference-over-Mobile-WiMax link. In terms of a live demo the call went fine, with no detectable jitter or latency from the cheap seats at Moscone West. Saw did use his small bit of time to take a dig at the ongoing iPhone 3G congestion issues, saying that you knew he was using something faster than 3G since there were no “buffering” messages and you could watch him wave his hand in real time.

Still, after putting a billion-six into Clearwire, you think Intel would have put together a live WiMax demo for the developer crowd, who would love geeking out in the trucks… guess we will have to wait until CES for the big WiMax marketing push. More thoughts and info later…

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.

Ever since we put together our first Sidecut Report on WiMax and its comprehensive look at the impact of the New Clearwire deal on the U.S. market, we have been intrigued by the prospect of the 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings that Sprint and the old Clearwire brought to the table.

So instead of just wondering about it, we spent some time asking questions and came up with a new product, something we are calling a Sidecut QuickCut — in this case a 12-page look at the New Clearwire’s spectrum depth, and how it gives WiMax an unquestionable boost over other wireless data operations coming to the U.S. market.

Titled “Deep and Wide: Why New Clearwire’s Spectrum Holdings Give WiMax a Boost in the U.S. Wireless Market 4G Deployment Race,” our “QuickCut” report takes a focused look at the role spectrum holdings play in wireless data services deployment for both Clearwire and its competitors in the so-called “4G” marketplace. Though the shorter form factor makes for a quicker read than our definitive 34-page full Sidecut Report on WiMax, there is still room to learn:

– Why having more spectrum depth means faster wireless services that are easier to deploy

– Why the 2.5 GHz frequency may be better at delivering wireless data than the highly touted 700 MHz band, especially in urban deployments

– Why the big telcos, AT&T and Verizon, are concerned about Clearwire’s spectrum holdings

– How New Clearwire’s spectrum holdings increase the chances for WiMax’s successful entry into the U.S. broadband services marketplace

The QuickCut WiMax Spectrum Report now even has its own spiffy button in our rapidly growing list on the right hand side of this page. If you are reading this via RSS, you can order via immediate download by clicking on this link. More about this report soon, after we recover from launching two reports in a single week while staying up all night watching the Olympics.

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.