clear

Clearwire's Rover service goes live, offers $5/day 4G service

Submitted by jive on Mon, 08/30/2010 - 17:52
Looks like the prepaid wireless data market is starting to heat up: Clearwire just launched its Rover service, which offers 4G wireless data for as little as $5 a day -- with two free days included when you first sign up. That's not bad if you just need a quick hit here or there, although you need to pony up $150 for that Rover Puck WiFi hotspot we saw at the FCC last month or $100 for a USB stick, and anything more than a day quickly becomes less of a deal at $20/week and $50/month. Oh, and it's 4G-only, so if you're not living or working in a WiMAX city you're out of luck. Still, those prices aren't terribly out of line with the competition, although we might be more inclined to choose Virgin's $40/mo prepaid MiFi and settle for 3G speeds while getting more coverage. Decisions, decisions -- what a wonderful problem to have.
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Clear iSpot's device filtering falls to the hackers in near record time

Submitted by jive on Wed, 08/11/2010 - 20:21
We have absolutely no idea what this means for iSpot owners' service plans if they go through with this -- for all we know, they'll detect un-iPad-like amounts of usage and threaten to up your monthly fee -- but if you're the risky type and you've got an iSpot lying around, its pesky MAC filtering can be a thing of the past with just a tiny bit of effort. There's a blog out there that now has concise instructions posted for gaining root access on the hotspot and tweaking config files to obliterate the MAC filter and enable USB tethering (by default it'll only do WiFi), but if that's too much effort for you, another site -- cheekily named "iSpot instant jailbreak" -- just hooks you up with a binary that you can upload to the iSpot to take care of the filtering in one fell swoop. Again, proceed with caution, because it's anyone's guess how Clear is going to take all this.
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Clear iSpot review

Submitted by jive on Tue, 08/10/2010 - 17:09
Lately, the notion of getting Apple's ever-growing line of mobile devices connected to 3G and 4G networks is attracting a lot of attention from carriers that aren't AT&T -- take Sprint's Overdrive case for the iPad, for instance -- but not in a million years did we think Clear would go so far as to create a mobile hotspot designed exclusively for them. In some ways, that's taking respect for the Apple ecosystem to a whole new level. Of course, even the most die-hard Apple fanatics probably own a WiFi-capable device or three that doesn't hail from Cupertino, so the usefulness of Clear's iSpot is definitely limited -- by design, of course. In exchange for the gimping, you pay just $25 a month for unlimited, blazingly fast WiMAX data with no contract, which is insanely cheap by modern standards -- especially in an era when many carriers are moving to data caps.
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Clearwire moves some eggs out of WiMax basket, to trial LTE

Submitted by jive on Fri, 08/06/2010 - 14:44

Sprint’s quasi-subsidiary former-underling Clearwire is moving against the WiMax or the highway attitude with the recent announcement that they intend to start LTE trials this year. Clearwire, who offers Clear 4G WiMax service in cities around the nation and shares their network with Sprint (and visa versa), hasn’t been quiet about their awkward courtship with LTE despite the rocky marriage with WiMax. In fact, it was just about a year ago that Clearwire started making noise about LTE.

So what does this mean for Palm and Sprint? For one, it means that Clearwire doesn’t have an exclusive relationship with Sprint, and if it sees more potential in LTE (let’s be honest here, who doesn’t?) it could shut down or switch over those single-network WiMax towers to LTE to be used by Verizon and AT&T and everybody else on the planet. For Palm it could spell trouble if they’re working on a WiMax device for Sprint. continue reading »»»

Clearwire puts its money where its mouth is, announces LTE trials for later this year

Submitted by jive on Wed, 08/04/2010 - 23:05
In spite of its pretty healthy (and growing) WiMAX footprint, Clearwire's been saying for at least a year now that it's seriously technology-agnostic -- undoubtedly a bid to assuage investors' fears that WiMAX could end up losing the 4G race in light of LTE's global momentum. Well, it's finally more than mindless fluff for an earnings call, because the company's getting real with both FDD and TD-LTE trials in Phoenix starting this Fall running through early 2011 that will allegedly push downlink speeds as high as 20Mbps and "showcase unique advantages" of Clearwire's "vast" reserve of spectrum. They'll also be testing LTE's ability to coexist with WiMAX in the same band, presumably in a bid to show that it can migrate down the road without leaving its existing customers high and dry.
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