Does WiMax Really Need Sprint-Clearwire Marriage?

Proponents of WiMax are no doubt heartened by today’s report from the Wall Street Journal which says that Sprint Nextel and Clearwire may be trying to find new financing to revive their proposed WiMax joint venture. While such an effort would no doubt be a positive for the nascent wireless technology (especially if Google and Best Buy chip in as the story says they might), one interesting point that’s come out of some recent interviews we’ve conducted says that no matter what happens with Sprint and WiMax, WiMax is poised for a breakout year in terms of U.S. and global deployments.

If you’ve been following our stories so far this year, it shouldn’t be a surprise that our inaugural “Sidecut Report” will be about WiMax, specifically targeting deployments, opportunities and market projections for U.S.-based providers. Right now our target “ship date” for the WiMax report is mid-February, assuming all interviews are completed as scheduled. Updates on availability, pricing and ordering procedures will be posted on this blog, but if you’d like an email alert just send us a message to sidecutreports@gmail.com and we will let you know when it’s ready.

So if the Clearwire-Sprint marriage gets back together, it’s clearly great for WiMax, but as we are hearing from other players, it’s not a make-or-break deal either. Stay tuned for more from our WiMax “Big Report,” coming soon!

Plot Thickens Around Frontline, Cyren Call

Since rules for the ongoing 700 MHz spectrum auction prohibit participants from talking about pretty much anything, it may be some time before we hear the full story behind the last-minute collapse of Frontline Wireless, the Reed Hundt/John Doerr-backed attempt to create a new national wireless broadband provider.

Harold Feld over at Wetmachine last week opened up the can of worms asking whether or not former Nextel chief Morgan O’Brien killed Frontline, citing some anonymous sources close to the proceedings. It’s pretty deep into the insider-baseball details, but basically from the sounds of it O’Brien — who had a similar plan to Frontline’s called Cyren Call — may have mucked up the works via his attempts to become the broadband negotiating agent for public-service concerns.

Having seen O’Brien in action when he pitched the Cyren Call idea, all I can say is that he’s a hell of a salesman. I can also say that he has no shortage of enemies in the telecom-o-sphere. Should O’Brien be the reason for Frontline’s collapse — and the apparent complete lack of interest by any bidders in the D block of spectrum — there’s gonna be some ’splainin to do.

Feld, for one, calls for the FCC to halt the auction while it investigates, but I doubt that will happen. Susan Crawford (thanks for the pointer Susan) wonders what will become of the D Block should it go unauctioned, which looks like it might happen.

Anyone want to bet that we’ll be talking about this a bit in Boulder next month?