When Clearwire brought Bill Morrow in as CEO in March, it was probably to be expected that senior executives from the prior regime were “in play,” so to speak — we’ve reported before on the demotion of Barry West from President to President/International, and most recently Scott Richardson, formerly chief strategy officer, stepped away from Clearwire to pursue more entrepreneurial interests (and also to leave behind the burgeoning bureaucracy). Another exec who got sacked was CFO David Sachs, a short-timer who had the unfortunate timing to join before Morrow was named CEO — if there is any exec a new CEO wants familiarity with, it’s the CFO spot, so you can almost count on any new CEO at any public company bringing in “his own person” before too long.

By canning Gude and naming two more senior execs today — David Maquera, who will take over as senior VP/chief strategy officer, and Thomas Enraght-Moony as senior vice president and GM of CLEAR Online — Clearwire is further down the road of transition from plucky startup to big, bureaucratic service provider. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as the company rapidly adds markets — it never hurts to have more experience on board. And you have to wonder if the poor rollouts in Baltimore and Chicago — both originally Sprint planned and developed — made senior execs like West and Gude damaged goods, at least from a longevity standpoint.

But as we asked before, will Clearwire keep enough innovators around to keep it from falling into the big-service-provider trap? Remember, part of the idea behind the open WiMAX network is that it would be different from business as usual. Clearwire backers should hope bringing in a lot of big-company execs doesn’t make the company lose any entrepreneurial buzz it might still have.

With Clearwire’s quarterly earnings calls coming up next week, maybe we’ll hear something official soon — but I doubt it, in no small part because I just haven’t even caught a whiff of any potential device on any of the numerous gadget-blogs that spend roughly 27 hours of each day sniffing out “exclusive” and “scoop” screenshots of any new device, real or imagined. So if they haven’t seen it, can it possibly exist?

Over the past few months at various industry events I have politely questioned Cisco folks about if and when we might see the WiMAX end user device that Cisco said, back in May, would likely be out sometime this year. In return I’ve gotten back a lot of blank stares and not one single hint that a WiMAX device was in the offing; so I turn to you, Sidecut readers — anyone hear anything? Yea or nay?

Well — call it an epiphany, but over the past few months I have lost count of the number of times I have seen people reading things on their iPhones, either while traveling, commuting, or just during down times of life in general. Apparently it is somewhat of a trend, even though it’s a pain to scroll through long texts and the screen isn’t very big. But — when you have some time to kill, what else are you going to do? How many levels of Peggle can you play before you feel like a fool for wasting time on a game?

Better, perhaps, to get some work done — or at the very least, catch up on some reading. That is why we here at Sidecut Reports are trying to make it easier for you to get the very latest of our deep-dive research and analysis on all things 4G, starting with our Clearwire NTK (need to know) series, quarterly reports that are just about at 3,000 words each, priced at $4.95. So — for about the price of a Venti Latte, you get an update on all things WiMAX that you can carry around in your laptop, or on your iPhone. We have a bunch of our stuff up on Amazon now, with more coming soon.

To me, it’s all about giving people as many ways as we can for them to consume our content. Ideas, suggestions for improvement, or offers of a way to make Sidecut Reports the next iPhone app — we’re all ears here!

Since it’s Nov. 1, time for a new map — and the one on the Clear.com website now shows Chicago “in the green” of Clearwire services, while adding Dallas/Fort Worth to the list of cities with service in Texas.

In North Carolina, the cities of Charlotte, Raliegh and Greensboro are also now listed as "live," so it looks like Clearwire should be able to make good on its promise to step up subscriber numbers in Q4, simply by having lots more markets selling services.

The big ones, however, are Chicago and Dallas — two huge metro areas where Clearwire will see how it fares against existing service providers. In Chicago, Clearwire also has its first true “commuter” city, since thousands there ride the rails every day, to and from work, play, school and in just general getting-aroundness. Will WiMAX’s ability to connect while mobile make a big impression? We are only now just going to find out.

We’ll have some more thinking on Clearwire market launches later this week. And yes, the launches mean that Sprint’s 4G services are available there too. Meanwhile, more detail from the Chicago maps below.

The funny footnote to this video is that the first time I saw Clearwire show it — during a keynote speech at the 4GWE show in Los Angeles this past September — the footage clearly showed the driver doing all the iPhone manipulations, which made the audience laugh out loud (taking driving while texting to a new level). Since then Clearwire has cleaned it up so that it appears the passenger is doing the testing. Smart move.

Actually as we go into next year, when we expect to launch a number of multi-mode 3G/4G devices, which we think will be very hot, those will carry some significant subsidies as well. So I think it’s a trend that’s kind of with the industry to stay. But it’s not necessarily bad for the industry health, it just changes the economics in that the subsidy expenses will be higher.

Later on in the call, Hesse seemed optimistic that (like Clearwire), Sprint’s 4G sales would pick up toward the end of the year as bigger markets like Chicago and Dallas go live:

And also, very importantly, as I mentioned in my comments, it is too early for it to move the needle a lot but it’s going to give us momentum, we hope, into 2010 and that’s 4G. We have launched 17 markets but most of the POPs for 2009 will come near the end of the quarter, but that’s giving us some good lift in mobile broadband, in particular in those markets. And as we expand the device line up in 4G—dual-mode 4G/3G—it will really put us in a good position, going forward, kind of leaving 2009 and going into 2010. So we think 4G and dual-mode devices, as they come on board, will start to give us some lift going forward.

Hesse later noted that Sprint’s ability to resell WiMAX from Clearwire helps keep network capital expenditures (aka capex) off Sprint’s books (in case you forgot, that was one of the main reasons for Sprint to do the Clearwire merger):

The other thing I will say, is on for future in terms of capex, think of Clearwire, as well, as the next wave of capex requirements in the U.S., particularly on the post-paid side, is going to be building out 4G. And think of Clearwire as helping us almost cap, because we will still continue to improve coverage and increase capacity in our 3G network. But we can mitigate the amount of capital required for continued expansion of capacity in our 3G network with 4G. So as you are thinking about—it seemed like you thought our capex spending might be perhaps low going forward. A lot of that capex, the data capex, is being picked up on the Clearwire side.

Sorry I don’t have the exec’s name — I came in late to the keynote panel — but someone clearly from Sprint was asked about MIDs, and the reply wasn’t encouraging. Though the Mondi is available from Clearwire in its current markets, its high price — $449.99, not including any rate plan — was noted by the Sprint exec as something that keeps wallets in pockets.

“With MIDs, when you take the price and then add rate plans, customers start to get a little uncomfortable,” said the Sprint exec on stage. “It’s just not a scalable model to get a lot of traction.” A few remarks later, the same exec basically said that if device manufacturers want to get MIDs on WiMAX networks, they may have to eat part of the costs to seed interest. “We [service providers] aren’t going to accept all the risk,” the Sprint exec said.

Zang! Tough words, but we pretty much agree with Sprint on the whole MID thing — in our most recent CLEARWIRE NTK report for October 2009, we called the Mondi “an overly expensive, somewhat confusing form-factor machine that wasn’t big enough to do ‘real’ laptop work, and didn’t contain a cellular link to make voice calls an easy proposition.” We also said the $450 list price was way too high for such an esoteric device, especially compared to the $199 list price for the Apple iPhone 3GS. But that also means that Sprint isn’t going to stick its neck out on unproven devices; remember, CEO Dan Hesse dissed Android just one short year ago. Unfortunately for WiMAX users, that means more dongles and laptops.

There was more disappointment for developers hoping to hear more about the cool things WiMAX might enable them to do — network APIs for attributes like location-based services and QoS hooks are apparently still on the drawing board, answers that prompted one twitterer in the audience to note that “Top Q&A response at dev conference is “its on the roadmap.” While we are bullish on things like the mobile broadband routers (which we call Pocketspots) that Sprint has already launched, cool toys that exploit WiMAX’s attributes are things we apparently won’t see until much later in 2010.

Or, as we said in our CLEARWIRE NTK report for October 2009: “Without a doubt, the coolest thing about WiMAX is its ability to provide a true broadband connection with cellular mobility. One of Clearwire’s biggest problems, however, is a lack of a compelling reason to take advantage of that mobile connection — and the dearth of devices that would allow you to even try.”

Unfortunately, nothing we heard Tuesday changed our mind. The wait continues.

Still no word from Clearwire folks who last week nailed down most of the remaining 2009 launch schedule without adding any details about when the good folks in Baltimore can expect to see Clear services replacing Xohm. Guessing we may hear more this week at the Sprint developer conference right here in Sillycon Valley, so we will let you know what we hear.

UPDATE, 10/27/09: At the Sprint Open Developers Conference today we saw a market-launches slide with Baltimore in the 2010 column. Don’t look good, Baltimore!

Here are the official company press releases, one which talks about companion services offered through both Sprint and Comcast, and another that details Sprint and Clearwire plans only. A quick list is below:

Markets Clearwire Will Launch in November:
– Philadelphia (actually already selling services there)
– Chicago
– Dallas/Fort Worth
– San Antonio
– Charlotte, N.C.
– Greensboro, N.C.
– Raleigh, N.C.

December Launches:
– Seattle
– Honolulu
– Maui, Hawaii

Let it be known that we will volunteer to test the Maui service when it launches… anyone willing to sponsor our “fact-finding” trip?

No word yet on when Clearwire will officially retire the Xohm operations in Baltimore and start selling Clear services there. But if it happens before the end of the year, then Clearwire will get to its planned 25 new markets for 2009.

News recap: Stacey H at GigaOM has a good wrapup of all the news with all the active links.