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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.

Maybe he wasn’t asked, maybe he said no — no idea right now, but it seems like a huge missed opportunity since BT is sort-of responsible for the whole Comcast-blocking mess in the first place. (But then the two firms are BFF now, right? Right.)

Anyway, should be good theater. Hope we get in!

UPDATE: Looks like Comcast is skipping the party, too. Maybe this is why — they didn’t want to have to face an angry Dave!

Anyone else? We do know that Google’s Rick Whitt and Skype’s Christopher Libertelli will be in the audience, taking up seats that otherwise might go to the newest Comcast employees.

UPDATE: According to DeVitt’s spokespeople, other panelists for Thursday include Harold Feld and Ben Scott from the Free Press. Quite the busy week for Harold, who spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill testifying at the 700 MHz hearings (where he invoked Passover themes in an entertaining argument to “let my spectrum go,” or something along those lines).

While I’m not as pessimistic as some (like Stacy over at GigaOM) about WiMax’s eventual place in the broadband-services world, there wasn’t a lot of confidence instilled by Sprint’s unwillingness to commit to any specifics about a service that the company still claims to be on track for a Q2 launch in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. (UPDATE: According to other reports, Sprint is now saying the launch will be “later this year.” Just more confusion showing how muddled the message was this week.)

The CTIA event was a perfect platform for Sprint to spread the word — hundreds of telecom-centric scribes filled the press room, snarfing down stinky barbecue sandwiches while waiting, perhaps hoping to write about something other than another iPhone clone.

But instead of tackling the rumors head on — or at least addressing the fiscal problems that make stories about the need for a WiMax white knight sound credible — Sprint CEO Dan Hesse whiffed during his keynote, talking only about how great WiMax is before sprinting to a meeting room, with no press Q&A and nothing more than a “coming soon” slide to serve as the big Xohm news of the day. Poor Xohm President Barry West then had to spend the better part of Tuesday and Wednesday fending off increasingly aggressive questions about launch dates, investments and partnerships. A Tuesday evening Xohm press reception got off to a chilly start when West ended his welcoming remarks with a bit of a snarly warning about not asking questions he couldn’t answer.

(So of course we waited all of 10 seconds to ask him when the partnership would be announced. Graciously, West did continue to answer questions he could answer, such as one about what was causing the biggest delays — “Backhaul,” West said, claiming it was hard to find enough tech types with microwave experience to quickly set up tower sites.)

After WiMax took a few lumps from Vodaphone CEO Arun Sarin — who said during his Wednesday keynote that LTE should be the unifying 4G standard — West came out swinging during an afternoon Xohm update, saying he agreed there should be one 4G wireless standard — “but why bother with a standard [LTE] that isn’t finished? Let’s go with WiMax,” he said, gettting a laugh from the audience.

Then responding to a question about whether or not Sprint had the resources to go it alone on Xohm, West said: “Is [Sprint] healthy enough? Yeah, you bet it is.”

But if that is true, then why didn’t Hesse say that up front? Even if there are some advanced negotiations that prompted the impromptu news freeze, a bold bluff couldn’t hurt any more than the confusing appearance of lots of Xohm sizzle (snappy black outfits, a sizeable show-floor booth, lots of branding, some TV ad previews) without any steak to back it all up. Attendees from Xohm hardware partners and even some black-clad Xohm workerbees grumbled or shook their heads, wondering why there was no big announcement to match the buildup.

Maybe we’ll hear more soon, maybe not. But for WiMax backers, there weren’t a lot of smiles in Vegas this week, despite new products like Nokia’s WiMax tablet. In a briefing Wednesday with Motorola senior vice president Fred Wright (one of the leaders of Moto’s WiMax ship), Wright told us there was a “lot of momentum” behind Sprint and Clearwire, but later in the interview some frustration surfaced.

“Clearly, [Xohm] is very important to us,” Wright said. “But it isn’t going to make or break our WiMax business.”

Ouch!

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!

Sources here on the floor at the Las Vegas Convention Center still think some kind of deal is in the works, however. According to one source, Clearwire exec Gerry Salemme was doing the conference-room dance, so maybe we’ll hear something that isn’t a joke.

More later, including a look at the Nokia WiMax tablet.

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).

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.)

The question is customer service, and who will do a better job — again from personal experience I would give the nod to Best Buy over the carrier-specific retail outlets. Maybe we will find out next week if the Nokia/WiMax tablet rumors are true, when Sprint CEO Dan Hesse gives a keynote speech at the CTIA show in Vegas. And then you can go to Best Buy to pick one up.