RSSLargest US WiMAX deployment is official
By Tim Conneally | Published June 16, 2009, 4:58 PM
As Clearwire announced just one month ago Atlanta, Georgia's WiMAX network has officially launched, and is the biggest United States deployment of the 4G technology to date, covering some 1,200 square miles with more than 400 cell sites.
Like Clearwire's Portland WiMAX network, Atlanta's core network equipment from access points to consumer equipment has been supplied by Motorola. Future deployments, however, will be built upon Cisco equipment, Clearwire announced early last May.
Clear has Home Internet plans beginning at $20 per month, and Mobile Internet plans that start at $40 per month, and offers daily passes for $10. Subscribers can buy their 4G modems outright or lease them monthly. The Motorola USB modem costs $59.99 or $4.99 per month, and the residential WiMAX modem which can be fixed with a voice adapter for IP-based telephony costs $79.99 or $4.99 monthly. The voice adapter costs an additional $15 and an unlimited calling plan tacks on $24.99 per month.
The Clear Spot (no relation to the Captain Beefheart album of the same name) is a portable WiMAX hotspot which connects to the 4G network and can share the connection via 802.11b/g Wi-Fi with up to 8 devices.
Later this summer, Clear's Las Vegas network will officially be launched.
The advertising blitz in Portland has been overwhelming with half the billboards in town declaring themselves "not a billboard", but instead a "place to get super fast mobile internet". They've also had people working in glass sided "offices" being pulled around town. Then there was all the TV, radio and online advertising.
You got the feeling they had to prove there was an audience and were going to spend as much as necessary to get customers.
I'm not sure it worked. Free wifi is everywhere (bars, cafes, airport, downtown) and people who really need mobile internet tend to want to be able to travel.
I would love to see an alternative to cable and DSL and wireless makes sense from an infrastructure POV. However, the speeds, especially for upstream just don't compare.
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|Who the frak is Captain Beefheart ?
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|Google is your friend:
http://bingle.pwnij.com/...sourceid=Mozilla-search
Don't ya fraking love it?
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|Bingle.
Sweet.
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|Not mine. Nifty search engine mashup linked to by someone else here. I take *zero* credit for it.
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|Would be helpful to have advertised and realistic bandwidth mentioned in that article...
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|Now sprint needs to drop the WIMAX smart phones and we'll be all set.
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|A friend of mine tried clear and had horrible service from day one. They ended up going DSL. They just wanted basic cheap, slow broadband.
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