Sidecut Reports

News of note around the ol’ Internets:

Senate Ready for DTV Delay: Sen. Rockefeller says it’s a disgrace that the DTV transition needs to be delayed. Vote is next week?

WiMax Forum Wants to Make Roaming Easier: The industry group launches a plan to help providers, device manufacturers and others synchronize WiMax services for easier roaming.

Sprint Dials Up a $2B Public Safety Plan: The good folks at Sprint have an idea about how to spend some of that stimulus cash, to build a network for public safety personnel.

Wireless Providers Want Cash, Not Conditions: Meanwhile, the big cellular telco lobbying organization, CTIA, says stimulus cash is great, but please hold the “open network” conditions, thanks.

VoIP a Winner over 4G: A study says that Voice over IP will be a big winner on 4G networks. (We agree, and plan to cover the topic in our WiMax Focus research service later this year.)

It made sense to us that small-to-medium-size businesses might be some of the early adopters of mobile WiMax services in the U.S., especially companies with “local nomads,” workers who roam a lot but in a somewhat local region (which could be covered by a single metro-area WiMax service). Seems like the Clearwire folks are thinking the same way, as evidenced by this new page touting business-specific service plans for their Portland, Ore., network.

While the in-office broadband prices seem competitive — unlimited usage with 6 Mbps/1 Mbps download/upload speeds for $75 a month — the more-compelling offer may be the “mobile shared” services which, allow for both in-office and local-roaming use. The mobile plans (which are advertised under a “coming soon” banner) will let small offices support teams of users on the same billing plan, starting at $75 a month for a shared 15 Gbytes of mobile data. According to the plan page, each additional device is $25, which theoretically makes such a service much cheaper than cellular data plans, which average about $60 a month per user for much slower speed links.

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Interesting stuff from Andy A about his client Truphone and the moves they are making, including the launch of calling services for the iPod Touch. Just shows all the fun things you can do with an open-to-development platform and a true broadband connection.

As Andy’s analysis says, the emergence of Truphone-like apps means good things to customers of mobile broadband services like Clearwire’s Clear (aka Xohm for now). Now all we need are some WiMax devices as cool as the iPod and iPhone.