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]