Sidecut Reports

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.

It was interesting to read last week that one of the things that convinced Comcast CEO Brian Roberts of WiMax’s viability was a demonstration of how well mobile WiMax can work, even at 50 mph.

In a report last week from Light Reading’s cable guy Jeff Baumgartner, Roberts (whose company poured just north of a billion bucks into the New Clearwire WiMax deal) said “he became a believer partly due to a Clearwire WiMax demo that served up video as he and his test group zipped down the road at 50 miles per hour.”

While we’re not sure where Roberts’ demo took place (guessing Portland, Ore.), we were similarly impressed by the Motorola-Intel mobile WiMax demo at CES way back in January. From our most recent WiMax report, here is a small snippet about the WiMax drive-by (which one of our guest editors said should have been the first part of the report, because he liked the tale so much). Remember, you can order the report and get the whole story via immediate download. But here’s the excerpt, anyway:

When it comes to Internet use, watching a streaming YouTube video clip is a pretty mundane thing these days. But when you add in a significant degree of difficulty — say, watching YouTube without interruption inside a sport-utility vehicle driving around Las Vegas at 35 mph — then you start to realize the power and potential of Mobile WiMax in a very simple and understandable way.

The aforementioned experience was facilitated this past January by Intel and Motorola, who earned no small bit of publicity at the CES show by equipping a small fleet of SUVs with internal Internet connectivity powered by Mobile WiMax. The completely un-canned demo — reporters riding in the vehicles were allowed to use the connectivity in any fashion they desired on a range of devices — showed a high degree of confidence from Motorola and Intel that even a small, hastily constructed Mobile WiMax network would perform sufficiently well.

The report goes on to describe what you might find if you drove one of those trucks about an hour away… to a small town where a big telco is quietly running a commercial WiMax network of its own… if you want the details, you know where to find ‘em.

Man, just when you thought you could take a break again here come the nice words of praise from Mr. VoIP himself, Andy Abramson. Sure, go ahead and point people to the new site when there’s nothing happening there! Nothing like a friendly kick in the pants to get ya blogging again.

If you’ve poked around here a bit you are probably getting the idea that Sidecut Reports will eventually be something more than blog posts about scoring sweet parking at the Palazzo to avoid the CES crowds (FYI, the parking worked Tuesday and Wednesday as well). You can stay tuned by subscribing to the RSS feed here, or you can shoot me an email to sidecutreports at gmail dot com and I will personally alert you to any major annoucements/news/sports predictions. (Still working on getting an email subscription list together; like the Palazzo, there are still guys wandering around Sidecut HQ with cordless drills but the doors are open so c’mon in.)

On the casual blogging front, I am interested to see what really happens this week at MacWorld; I find this report of a WiMAX-enabled MacBook hard to swallow, especially since Intel isn’t even promising WiMAX PC cards or chips until mid-summer at best. A better guess might be 3G inside, as others have suggested. Can’t wait to hear.

As Andy noted, I will also be continuing to pinch-hit in the GigaOM lineup for the near future, concentrating on matters telecom and policy so feel free to keep me updated about any news, announcements or rumors in that arena to that email address, sidecutreports (all one word) at gmail dot com.

Mr. Vegas is in the house at CES, and when it comes to beating the crowds and getting things done our chip count is up, not down. After a seamless flight in on the 6:20 a.m. nerd bird from SFO, Mr. Vegas scored by pulling into the just-paved underground parking lot at the Palazzo, the new (opened yesterday) Siamese-twin add-on to the Venetian.

Though we’d called ahead to ascertain that the lot was open, the payoff was uncertain until we came up the escalators into the Palazzo casino area — which turns out to be a much shorter walk to the Venetian/Sands CES area than the Venetian’s own convoluted parking lot. Then after a quick badge check-in we even found a near-empty cafe in the Palazzo for a heart-healthy breakfast with no wait at all (try THAT at the LV Hilton, where coffee shop waits can average two or more hours during CES).

The only glitch so far was our reliance on CES to broadcast the Jerry Yang talk from the LVCC (since the shuttle bus lines were way too long to get over there in time for the 11 a.m. speech). Though they broadcast the morning Panasonic keynote here at the Sands press lounge, we were informed that since Yang’s speech was part of the “Industry Insider” series (and not a “keynote”) there was no live feed. Kind of curious that a show with multiple HD TVs in every nook and cranny can’t put together a live broadcast of every speaker so that you don’t have to waste time shuttling back and forth between the travel-incompatible sites the show is staged at. Oh well.

(From the looks of the hugely long line that just formed in front of me for the free press lunch, guess not many others in the biz care about what Yahoo has to say. What’s the matter with these people, don’t they have expense accounts at publications like Batteries Digest?) Mr. Vegas will not partake of the free lunch, as it violates a Mr. Vegas rule: No Steam Table Food.

Stay tuned for more from Mr. Vegas as CES unfolds. Also check GigaOM where we will be posting news of a more “real” flavor.

Friends of Mr. Vegas sighting: Oliver Rist, now at PC Magazine. Will be seen later this evening staring down chilled martinis. Bet the over.