4G WiMax from Clear.....

[Tommy L]

Not sure if this qualifies as general discusion or off-topic, but here goes,

 

Has anyone signed up for Clear 4G WiMax? Its fancy talk for wireless internet beamed over major cities. Im in Chicago, got sold on all the sales talk and signed up. Im sick of the Comcast machine and AT+T monster giving me shit service in exchange for huge bundles of cash.

 

But now Im a bit disappointed with the speeds from Clear. Im at Wicker Park (home using the USB dongle) and 600 W Van Buren (modem).

 

Any one else have any experiences they'd like to share?

Tom.

[Scott Dombrowski]

I have it in Baltimore... signed up when it was still called Xohm a year and a half ago. The speeds aren't the fastest, but are comparable to Verizon DSL around here. I'll get 300Kb/s-500Kb/s downloads, which works for me. We're actually outside of the stated service area by about 1/2 a mile, but get 2-3 signal bars out of 5. At $35 a month, that's $10 cheaper than Verizon, and as a bonus, I don't have to give my money to Verizon or Comcast.

[dlparisi]

I signed up for Clear in Elmhurst (near Chicago for everyone else) and was happy with the speeds I was getting (3mb down, 1mb up) but not the signal strength. I could usually get 2 lights, occasionally 4 even though I was supposed to be pretty close to a tower. Tech support told me it could be trees interfering which is a little silly considering I live in a town called Elmhurst and it was the middle of winter so no leaves on the tress yet (I can't imagine what it would have been like in the summer). The biggest problem I had though was with the ping times - very high. I wanted to use the CLEAR to connect to Ooma (VOIP) phone and I was getting some very choppy converstions. I cancelled CLEAR after the trial was up and switch to uverse for $5 more a month.

[Tommy L]

Well its been a week or so and Im happy with Clear. They sent out an engineer who looked over our setup. tweaked a couple of things and now its about the same as our old T1 line at my old office. It gets slower at lunchtime tho, I guess everyone goes out the office and gets on there wireless usb dongle at lunch. I get 1Mb up (which is there maximum at the moment) and 5 down. Plenty for what I use it for...and I doint have to pay Com(****)cast or At+(wankers)t.