[TriLUG] Buh bye ClearWire

[Reginald Reed via TriLUG]

Another *huge* issue was how Sprint/Clear deployed WiMax, 2.5GHz.  Building
penetration is horrible at frequencies that high, so it also sucked for
mobile devices as well.  I was an early adopter with a Sprint HTC EVO 4G in
mid 2010.  Once inside a building, signal was pretty much non-existent
unless you were by a window (pointing towards the closest tower!).  This
also made it terrible moving.  That, coupled with Sprint's horrible EVDO
service back then, I actually paid the ETF to get the heck off Sprint.

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 8:59 AM, Igor Partola via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> The Problem with Clear was their positioning on the market and their
> policies. The technology did not fit what they were trying to sell. First,
> they had terrible latency and dropped packets. Not enough to affect
> bandwidth, but enough that doing certain things like using ssh or gaming
> was impossible. Surfing the web always felt like you were on a mobile
> network (because you were). It never felt snappy. They also had this
> terribly policy that you had to pay a cancelation fee, even after using
> them for just a little. So you buy the device, sign a year long contract,
> and if you want out three days later you have to return everything and
> still pay like $80.
>
> The technology IMO is much better suited for mobile phones and tablets.
> It's great for streaming video for example. The problem there is that the
> competition is so stiff and GSM dominates as the standard. Perhaps WiMax
> was just a bit ahead of its time. Had Clear instead gone after car
> manufacturers and sold the service as a car add-on (a la OnStar or Sirius
> radio) they might have been more successful.
>
> Igor
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