Comments on: Comcast to offer 4G wireless broadband service

Cable provider to go head-to-head against rivals with a new 4G wireless broadband service that operates over Clearwire's WiMax network.

[bonesbautista]

To those Portlanders thinking about trying out Clear - don't sign up for a contract! I've had the service - a home modem and a USB modem on a promotion, and the service has pretty much stunk indoors. I'm about 700 feet from one of their antennas, and about .7 miles from two others - all yesterday, for instance, my top download speed hovered around .15 megabits for both devices, the modems rebooted all day (today, too!) - and I'm on the 6 megabit plan...

The equipment for the Portland market doesn't have patch out ports, and is indoors-only. Soooo, if the service doesn't work indoors. I've had a tech to my house, the service worked great for a week (out of four now), and now I can't even get CNN to load in a timely fashion. I used my ATT card, and was about to bang out the same sites and use speedtest.net - Clear really needs help....

[McPlot]

How is it possible for you to have used a service that is not even available yet? This is not the service cell phone providers offer.

[wmyers4u]

That's a big chunk of change every month. I would think there would be a decent market for this as a stand alone product if it were a little more reasonably priced.

[jaguar717]

The pricing model is just ridiculous. Pay $45/month for a 12 mb connection (slower, but more expensive), then an additional $30 for a single laptop card that will get you 4mb, then an ADDITIONAL $20 to get 3G coverage?

Instead of nickle-and-dime-ing every which way, how about a comprehensive internet package? The "triple play" is a good idea for the 35+ crowd who want a "house" phone, but much of this generation isn't interested in a landline.

I'm certainly not interested in paying $95 for internet, then an additional 30-40 for basic cable (with another half dozen add-ons that'll cost extra). How about an all-internet package, with decent home speeds (think 20+ MB), 3G for decent coverage, and 4G as a selling point for the bleeding-edge. The marginal cost is nada so bundle that for $50/month and I'm sold.

Otherwise, I'd downgrade to a crappy DSL connection which gets half the speed but is <1/3 the cost.

[abcd9009]

@jaguar717

I understand your frustration but you have to think about it from the capitalistic society's point of view. You are living in US where the most important question is not how soon I can implement the new technology. The most important question is how can I make money on this service. The reason why Comcast and all other cable operators are still providing the triple play with "home" phone is because they have already invested Billions of dollars on the infrastructure. They are not just going to give it up and move to the next best technology.
If you want the best technology for people under 35, I would suggest you move to EU or Asia where you don't have to deal with companies like AT&T who can't offer basic MMS or thetering service or cable companies forcing you to get the "home" phone as part of the triple play. It's not because they don't have the technology or the means to provide the best possible technology/service but it's primarily because they haven't figured out how you and I will be paying for it so their execs can get a much larger paycheck and the stock price stays high.
In EU and Asia at least you will be getting the latest technology and most importantly the technology will be interoperable when you travel to another countries on vacation or business trip unlike in US where if you are on Verizon or Sprint, you might as well throw away your phone before you travel.
It's amazing how corporations in US will try to stay away from Industry Standards just so they can charge you more.
I don't know for a fact but I wouldn't be surprised if ClearWire is yet another technology just like CDMA which will be limited to just US since the rest of the world is on GSM.

[chrisx1]

"New customers signing up for Comcast's triple play bundle of TV, phone, and Internet can add the 4G wireless component for $30 extra a month. So with the introductory price of $99 a month for the first year, the total would be $130 a month. After the first year, that bundle increases to $130 per month, so it would cost subscribers with the 4G wireless service $160 a month.

For subscribers who want more ubiquitous coverage, Comcast is offering a 3G/4G service that provides wireless connectivity on the Clearwire 4G network when it is available and on Sprint Nextel's 3G wireless service in other areas where 4G is not available. The cost of this service is an additional $20 per month."

Wow, only $180 for everything!!! :D So cheap and capped at 5GB per month too. Yay!!
What else can I get for another $20 per month?. I wanna have GPRS! I wanna have dial-up!! Can I pay another $10 a month, please?!

[ecotopian--2008]

Comcast demonstrates that they just don't get it, again.

[PixP]

Comcast sucks. I just got the new mifi router from Verizon. It's pretty coooool.

[shadowself]

"Clearwire claims that it can provide up to 4Mbps for downloads and 500 kbps for uploading, which is more than double what consumers can expect using a 3G wireless connection."

I love that "up to" statement. Current 3G on most networks is "up to" 3.6 Mbps (which is NOT half of 4 Mbps by the way) and the next generation of 3G is "up to" 7.2 Mbps. Some service providers have already started deploying the 7.2 Mbps variant. Hell, even AT&T will have it universally deployed by sometime in 2011. Yet in true real world situations a user usually will see only about 1/10 of those rates (though in the wee hours of the morning on a clear night, near a tower, when virtually no one else is around using the system they might get a significant fraction of those "up to" rates).

A true 4G system (e.g., LTE) will be much faster than that with speed of "up to" 100 Mbps downlink and "up to" 50 Mbps uplink. However, as with the 3G systems a typical user in real world situations will probably only see 10% of those rates.

True 4G systems probably won't be widely deployed until around 2012 or later. It is unfortunate that Comcast and others are confusing the issue by claiming their systems are "4G". WiMax has been around for years. This is just an attempt at rebranding it to get people to buy in.

[freemarket--2008]

Wi-Max has the same theoretical rates as LTE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

"The goal for the long term evolution of both WiMAX and LTE is to achieve 100 Mbit/s mobile and 1 Gbit/s fixed-nomadic bandwidth as set by ITU for 4G NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Network) systems through the adaptive use of MIMO-AAS and smart, granular network topologies."

[J.G.]

Signed up for the Clearwire/Comcast joint venture at $49.99 monthly yesterday. Home service is regular Comcast cable Internet. Mobile service is Wimax with a Clear (Motorola actually) USB modem. However, I will have to run my Mac in Windows when using the mobile device. There are no Mac drivers so far.

[esiders]

Comcast should focus on it's current service offerings before they try to expand to something they can't handle anyway. I am dropping my comcast internet service because the clear wireless service is faster in my area and that is sad.

[kevin011235]

4G??????
Maybe they should check the spesifications for 4G first, and then claim that they are providing 4G service.