clearwire internet service?

I don't know about clearwire specifically, but a hiking lodge I stayed at had some kind of satellite "broadband" internet service, since absolutely nothing else but dialup is available at their location. It is dreadfully slow. "Broadband" is a misnomer. On a good day it falls somewhere between dial-up and broadband speed. On a bad day it's a lot slower than dial-up.

Check for some real-world bit rate figures before you take their word that it's really "broadband." Of course, the place I am talking about was satellite, and you're just talking abot wireless. But I'd still investigate carefully.

 

I'm not familiar with ClearWire either. Guess I should investigate, as it may come up in my field of work.

My friend who has AllTell claims he was able to reduce his communications costs by shutting down his DSL and home line, and use his cellphones for both voice calls and internet connection to his desktop using the data cable. They claim it works faster than their DSL. I checked Alltel's website, I can't see them getting reasonable speed internet service without substantial extra cost. I suspect they had a slow DSL connection.
My point is though, that you may be able to use your cellphone for internet to your computer. Sometimes this can be done wirelessly through bluetooth, depending on phone and carrier.

 

I'll chime in on this as well... I used my verizon cell as a back up (kind of fun surfing the web while driving around), it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either... nice thing was, they treated your time online just like any other call, peak hours you use up your minutes, after 9, free... of course, I never downloaded anything, so I wouldn't be surprised if downloading would result in some charge somewhere...

 

Broadband Reports (.com) is a good place for info.
http://www.dslreports.com/

Enter zip code for local reports
http://www.dslreports.com/archive

CHECK YOUR SPEED. :blink: :huh: :mellow:
(the Flash 8 Plugin one is fun)
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

My results: (not to brag or anything :lol: )

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sufferin' Prius Envy @ Jan 4 2007, 03:04 PM) [snapback]370934[/snapback]</div>

man, if only i was still on campus... I'd school your numbers :lol:
Back then, we had a 1gbps coming into each computer!

Of course, now i have to pay for my own, and it's nowhere near as fast

 

Clearwire is the first generation of WiMAX service, using the NextNet WiMAX modem (NextNet was acquired by Motorola ).. It can produce very high peak speeds, but one of the "features" of the system is an automatic QOS system which limits link speeds based on a number of criteria (what "service level" you pay for, how long the transfer has been going on, etc, so what can happen is that even if you pay for basic level (slow) service, for small files, the system will allow a high peak download speed at first, and then throttle you back to your nominal service level speed after a few seconds, and if you've really been going a long time and there's a bandwidth constraint, it will throttle you back some more- service providers really love this feature, but it's rather frustrating to many users)..

The service is co-located at cell-phone towers, but it does *NOT* use cell-phone technology, only the fact that there's an existing antenna tower and power/network connections available- the WiMAX base station is entirely separate and different frequencies/technology than the cellular base station, so the number of bars you get on your cell phone has absolutely no relation to what kind of signal/speed you might get from the WiMAX service.. The service is based on OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiple access), which effectively splits a chunk of spectrum into a group of independent channels, and data is sent in parallel across those independent channels with provision for out-of-order reception, error detection/control/retransmission and packet re-assembly at the endpoints.. Basically, depending on your environment, if you have more parallel channels available to you, the faster you can send data, and if one of those channels gets blocked due to interference, etc, you only lose a small percentage of your bandwidth vs. the whole thing if you only had a single channel..

I've had a chance to try this technology for the last few months, and from my point of view, it's not bad at all; it's not true broadband, but peak data rates are excellent for most home uses.. In extremely poor weather conditions, the signal can be severely degraded, but in most cases, even with a single "signal" light visible, you can still maintain an average 1 Mbps link.. As a "techie", the only think I really dislike is not having a CLI/OAM interface into the modem to be able to look at status and do configuration- the thing is really designed as a "plug and play" appliance: apply power and it starts looking for an WiMAX signal and base station to log on to, plug in an ethernet cable and the built-in DHCP server allocates you an IP address..

For the paranoid among you, the system is designed around a security by obscurity principle- they insist the system is "secure", but don't tell you how and what technologies are used to ensure this...

I think the real big plus of the technology is its portability- it's not a mobile solution (ie, you can't surf while driving or while otherwise moving, although they do apparently have a mobile variant of the same technology), but you can pick it up, go to a new location, plug it back in, and as long as you're still in the service area, you're back online- this is ideal if you want internet connectivity out at a new job site, at the cottage, etc, and it's cheaper and faster than paying for GPRS/EDGE/1XRTT/1XEVDO data services through your cell phone.. If you need the absolute fastest speeds, you're best bet is still wireline technology..