Now this is what I’m talking about. I keep hearing about Clearwire and their “wireless” broadband. While it technically is wireless, meaning that you don’t need to run any cable to your house, it’s not “wireless” in the way that we generally use the word “wireless”, meaning truly mobile. Clearwire till now has had you rely on a base station for access, which acted as a DSL or Cable modem. It plugged into your wall for power, and you’d need a switch or hub to share that connection to your home PCs, not really wireless in the modern sense.
But now Clearwire’s offering a PC card that gives your laptop a connection straight through to its WiMAX network. This is truly mobile, you can take your portable anywhere you have WiMAX coverage and have real broadband access. In our opinion this is what Clearwire should have been doing all along.
It’s not cheap: at $59.99 a month it rivals similar offerings from AT&T and Sprint. The speeds are roughly the same as well, with Clearwire claiming downloads up to 1.5Mbps. But if you’re a single-laptop user, it’s very tempting.
Clearwire is only available in select cities now, but as their network rolls out, look for more cities to light up in the next few months.
Press release [Business Wire]
This is the best thing since 802.11a!
This is a waste of money.
85% of the time you can’t use your laptop, you could be in downtown Tacoma and can’t get access to the internet ( I was always told I’m was just out of the service area) this is a joke. I signed up with Sprint, and I can truly go anywhere and have access to the internet.
I wouldn’t change my home service with Clearwire, but I wouldn’t recommend the PC card until they get their act straight
Clearwire will not give you 1.5Mb/s DL speeds anywhere except next to their service provider so do not even read into that load of bull.
If you are only looking to browse the internet or do email then clearwire is fine for you.
If you plan on doing any video streaming, online gaming, or moderate to heavy downloading then do not waste your time, do not waste their time, their service cannot get you want you want.
The problem is that they have a 450ms to 600ms service latency that ruins most heavy internet use. and that latency is one way … so for all you internet gamers … that is 1- 1.5 seconds delay for whatever you do.
For heavy internet users … stick to cable or dsl and do not even consider this as an option.