FCC at Stanford: Winners and Not-so-winners

If you read my post over at GigaOM you can see what I thought was the biggest takeaway from Thursday’s open FCC meeting at Stanford. Now that I’ve finally walked all the way across campus to find my car (could there have been any place in the Bay area with more congested parking and access?), here’s a quick take on the winners and losers not-so-winners from the latest skirmish in net neutrality:

WINNERS

1) Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman. By bending over backwards politically and hosting a meeting on Larry Lessig’s turf, Martin gets to claim he is truly an objective chairman, in search of only the truth. Now back to Washington, where he can scuttle the Skype wireless Carterphone petition.

2) Larry Lessig, Stanford Law prof. See here for more explanation. (Or watch video on Lessig’s own blog.) The only slip in Lessig’s presentation was an arcane dip into a somewhat semantic difference between Lessig’s views on net neutrality, and the recent bill proposed by Mass. Rep. Ed Markey. If the leading net neutrality proponents have differences, shouldn’t they work them out internally? Saying he doesn’t agree completely with Markey just muddles the pro-net neutrality message, something you will never see happening from the other side.

3) Jason Devitt, CEO, Skydeck. One of the newest spokespersons on the net neutrality side, Devitt made some great points Thursday about how PCs are open platforms, but cell phones are not. Expect to see more of this argument, following the Carterphone lead set by folks like Skype’s Christopher Libertelli.

4) Robert “Robb” Topolski, Comcast-blocking hunter. It’s one thing to be geeky enough to spot and call out a major service provider for its misdeeds. It’s quite another to appear at a very public forum and not just hold your own ground (impressing seasoned tech reporters in the process), but to be confident enough to smack down an FCC commissioner, in this case Republican Robert McDowell.

While most of the reports out of the meeting cited Topolski’s comments toward Comcast, he added onto his presentation by pointedly and publicly correcting McDowell on the latter’s misconceptions about Comcast’s practices (McDowell had tried to assert during his remarks that Comcast was only blocking uploads, which Topolski disagreed with).

NOT-SO-WINNERS

(I was going to call this section “losers” but that seemed a bit harsh; let’s just say folks in this category failed to impress.)

1) Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate, FCC commissioners. Not much original thought from these two commishes — they could just simply step up to the podium, and say, “big business has told us not to regulate anything in telecom,” and sit down. Whenever you hear politicians, lobbyists or bureaucrats trot out the line about the fear of “unintended consequences” when referring to potential legislation, you know where those words are coming from — big campaign contributors who don’t want Washington mucking around in their profit streams. These two deserved more than the light boos they got. There are valid opinions on the side of lesser regulation, but merely citing the fear of “unintended consequences” isn’t enough. Or shouldn’t be, for regulators at the highest level.

2) Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. Conspicuous by their absence, the big carriers are just making it easy for people to say they aren’t interested in finding a solution to the net neutrality question, only getting their way.

FLAK JACKET AWARD

1) George Ou, independent network engineer (who used to have a well-read blog over at ZDNet). With all the telco folks missing in action, poor George was left alone to defend the ideas of net-management-not-net-neutrality, and I thought he didn’t do his own past writing justice.

Like other folks I talked to in the audience (including neighbor and Sling Media CEO Blake Krikorian, who had similar comments during his presentation), I’d rather see a different approach to these debates, maybe in a format that allows for more technical give-and-take. Like many folks with more technical details to discuss, Ou seemed handicapped against rhetoric pros like Harold Feld. Too bad, because this debate needs more folks with network expertise, and less D.C. lobbyist types.

Test-Driving the Nokia WiMax Tablet

It doesn’t count as a full review, but I did take the Nokia WiMax tablet out for a short test drive on the CTIA show floor Tuesday — and I can attest that the thing does work, the screen looks nice, and if your thumbs are fat like mine you might not like the keyboard, since it is set a bit close to the bottom of the screen.

Still no word from the Sprint folks on when the Xohm WiMax network will go live, or what pricing plans would be. (Barry West, the company’s WiMax tech lead, said “don’t even ask that question” at a press reception Tuesday evening.)

But Hey, Look! Sidecut Reports via WiMax to the Nokia Handset!

TechCrunch Misses the Point on WiMax

There’s a pretty funny picture in today’s TechCrunch post about the explosive potential of the proposed Comcast-Sprint WiMax deal, but the analysis from Erick Schonfeld does’t really make the dynamite go boom. (Of course, any post that starts out by saying “WiMax is going nowhere fast” is probably not going to be long on thorough analysis; usually we see more-balanced stuff from Erick.)

If you’ve read any posts here you’re aware that I am working on a long report on WiMax deployments in the U.S. — have delayed its release a bit while this whole Xohm thing shakes out. But in the course of lots of interviews and general research, it’s clear to me that WiMax isn’t going nowhere, but instead is more likely to emerge for real this year, starting with the Xohm launches in Chicago, Baltimore and D.C., as well as other cities before the end of 2008. One source says there are already antennas and base stations being put up in places like New York and Boston; the real question is whether Sprint can fully fund the launch on its own, or whether it needs some friends (like Comcast or Intel) to help.

While there are certainly questions to be raised about WiMax, a quick rip job shouldn’t pass for analysis. It almost seems like Erick wants to cut WiMax some slack — he calls it promising and “early days,” which of course it is — but then he goes back to swipes, citing some statistics about a lot of money being spent with not much to show. But it seems to make sense that anyone launching a new network would spend a lot of money on towers, infrastructure, etc., well before the launch. So why dog Sprint for spending $577 million last year on capex and opex? If they hadn’t, wouldn’t they be even farther behind?

Erick’s last two points also fail to really explain the situation: When he claims that “WiMax is more an alternative to fixed broadband Internet access than it is to mobile phone service,” he is correct but not necessarily accurate — WiMax isn’t meant to be a cell-voice competitor, so why compare apples and oranges? Since we don’t know all the details (or if the deal is even real), it’s still a guess as to why Comcast might be interested. Maybe a video-device deal, like Amazon’s Kindle? But since WiMax is more about mobile data than voice (though VoIP should do well if WiMax works as advertised), saying cable shouldn’t be interested because it’s not cellular seems a weak argument. An alternative interest may be the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” idea — since cable companies can only get so big, maybe funding a WiMax play is a way to chip away at telco businesses in markets where Comcast has no presence.

As for Erick’s second point — “It no longer makes sense to try to own all the pipes because pipes are becoming a commodity” — I have to disagree wholeheartedly. Pipes may be a commodity, but they also throw off huge amounts of revenue, billions and billions that from any standpoint looks like a good business. Since WiMax (or other standards-based technologies) can benefit from Moore’s Law improvements and economies of scale, opex for WiMax nets should decrease over time — already in the past few years, CPE prices have come down from $500 to around $150, for example. Erick’s contention that the cable companies should let WiMax build on its own and then cut deals for distribution misses the idea that WiMax nets may be a good investment — does anyone see the need for bandwidth decreasing, ever? If a new pipe can get built, why not invest early when the return multiples are higher?

(If you want to receive an email when our WiMax report is ready, drop me a line; look for it soon after the Sprint announcements at CTIA next week.)

ADDENDUM: Our pal Andy Abramson said last year that cablecos are behind the curve when it comes to local wireless broadband (hat tip to Esme Vos for the link).

Comcast to the WiMax Rescue? So Says WSJ

With yet another “people familiar with the talks” sourcing, the Wall Street Journal is nevertheless reporting that Comcast and Time Warner Cable are now the latest sugar daddies lining up to save WiMax from the not-so-successful clutches of Sprint and Clearwire.

We’ll skip most of the details because we have heard such reports from this same reputable outlet before, and they haven’t materialized. Past rumored bacon-savers Intel and Google reappear here, though in this report Comcast is purportedly the leading funder, to the tune of $1 billion. Google, which seems more interested lately in talking about wireless networks instead of actually spending money on them, is reported to be in with a few hundred million.

We’ll believe all this when we see it, which may indeed happen next week in Vegas where Sprint CEO Dan Hesse is scheduled to give a keynote at the CTIA wireless show. Stay tuned!

(Even though he probably shouldn’t be up late at night blogging, Om nevertheless put together a nice compilation of WiMax posts here.)

David Clark: A Net Neutrality Voice of Reason

I didn’t get to listen to all of the FCC’s Broadband Network Management Practices forum from Harvard today, but I did get to hear one excellent presentation from Internet legend David Clark, a technologist who offered some great insights on network management and bandwidth pricing — while also wondering out loud if the whole network neutrality discussion couldn’t be conducted with just a tad more civility.

“I would plead with all the actors [in the debate] that when they look over the fence, don’t say ‘enemy’ but say ‘partner,’ ” said Clark at the opening of his remarks, reasoning that if access providers and content creators work better together, there might be hope for a better Internet for all in the future. Not a bad sentiment to embrace as the new season of network neutrality debates kicks off.

Cheaper Cell Data Plans Welcome WiMax to Market

Think there’s any relation between the rumored Intel-Sprint-Clearwire WiMax deal and the flurry of new cell data plans being announced today by both Verizon and AT&T? The guess here is that it would have been hard to justify top-dollar prices for cell data plans if and when WiMax launches with much faster speeds (and we hope, much lower rates).

Not a bad move by the telcos to jump now — and maybe sign up more data customers to long-term contracts before they get a chance to see what WiMax is all about.

Silicon Flatirons: The Gossip Post

Now that our serious work is out of the way, here’s a quick take on the non-attributed, behind-the-scenes, from-the-hallways-or-maybe-even-the-restrooms stuff we heard at the Silicon Flatirons conference in Boulder last weekend:

Where’s AT&T? Too busy filtering traffic? Too bad reps from Ma Bell weren’t on hand in Boulder, since the company’s pledge to sift through all its traffic for possible copyright violations seemed to be part of every panel discussion, whether it was part of the topic or not. Since this was a conference mainly of lawyers, the main question seemed to be whether or not AT&T was setting itself up for legal liabilities by pledging to do deep-packet inspection on all bits running across its network. (At one point we were worried that Tim Wu was going to charge the stage in his no-need-for-a-microphone back-and-forth exchange with panelist Mark Lemley. But things calmed down.)

In the end, there seemed to be no good answer (though Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe told his lunch table that his company was legally afraid to do such inspections), especially since nobody from AT&T was around. “It doesn’t really matter if they would be guilty or not,” noted one men’s room pontificator. “No court would convict them of it anyway.” Nothing like a good cynical note to close it.

(At any rate, AT&T did sponsor the Sunday-night beer-n-wine reception, where on their dime we had a tasty 90 Shilling. Thanks!)

Broadband Policy: Boring, but Important

BOULDER, Colo. — Here at the Silicon Flatirons telecom policy conference, you don’t need to convince anyone about the importance of broadband policy and all its related aftereffects. The real challenge, of course, is making broadband issues matter to the outside world, especially when a pending change in the White House presents an opportunity to bring real leadership and vision to the country’s information policy direction.

From both sides of the political aisle, and from all different competitive parts of the industry, there was violent agreement here during Sunday’s sessions about the need to elevate the image of broadband policy in the ongoing political process. While other hot-button issues like the war in Iraq, health care and education rightly are political priorities, the ability for broadband to enable and improve all the other directives means it’s time to stop ignoring the need for leadership and vision in information technology — even if the topic is as boring as hell.

Telecom Policy Gets Shaped in Boulder

It’s been a pretty amazing day of discourse at this year’s Silicon Flatirons conference, hosted at the University of Colorado by Phil Weiser and the rest of the Silicon Flatirons gang. It’s going to take some time to process all the thoughts, opinions and even insider telco humor that reverberated inside the spiffy new CU law building during Sunday’s sessions, but stay tuned because there was as usual some great stuff about topics like network neutrality, why communications should matter more and what industry, politicians and the public at large should do to make broadband better. I am still doing some news posts on the conference for the GigaOM blog, so after I’m done with that I plan to weigh in with some more thoughts here.

As a tease, let me say that it is no small feat to get so many big personalities in the world of telecom, media and communications into one small auditorium — from commissioners from the FTC and FCC, to top execs from companies like Comcast, Google and Verizon to the leading legal and policy thought leaders — and then get them to not just speak, but to challenge each other and respond to the multiple queries from the just-as-wired members of the audience. More soon, after a break for dinner.

Update: More tomorrow, not tonight. Promise!

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!