Sprint 4G And Clearwire Arrives in Chicago > Also launched in Austin and San Antonio

Also launched in Austin and San Antonio

Now what bandwidth pool are each of the Clear tiers taken out of? Cable is 38mbit DOCSIS per node/tower. Is Clear's towers can only deliver advertised speed to only 1 subscriber at any time? How did Clear engineer their network for over subscription (which all telecom companies do).?

100+ MHz of spectrum to play with, that's how.

reply to patcat88
By having double the spectrum of Verizon and ATT LTE.

reply to iansltx

1. WiMAX is built for metro-area networks. There aren't going to be 200,000 subscribers on a tower, just like there aren't 200,000 subscribers on a cable node.

2. Cable has low SNR issues as well. There's also the issue of no-SNR areas...you know, the ones that aren't wired for cable.

3. If you aren't using DOCSIS 3.0 by corporate decision, 160 Mbps means nothing.

4. Clear has fiber backhauls to its main towers, and wireless bckhauls in between towers. Once you get fiber brought in the marginal cost of bandwidth is relatively low. On the wireless side, point to point wireless backhauls are available at the gigabit-per-second level.

5. There are no legacy users in the 100MHz of spectrum that Clear has.

With 100MHz of spectrum, Clear potentially has more capacity in a given area than 8-channel-bonded DOCSIS 3.0, though realistically due to lower than average signals etc. you'll see packages more comparable to DOCSIS 1.1 or maybe 2.0, at least with today's equipment. Which is perfectly fine; DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 are more than enough to compete on mobility and price versus DSL, non-D3 cable and even DOCSIS 3.

reply to iansltx

Finally, No more dial up

reply to iansltx

reply to Duramax08
YAY DURAMAX08!

Does the modem have an antenna port? If so, you might be able to hook up a 24 dbi grid tuned to 2.4 GHz and pull in some more bars that way.

reply to patcat88
WiMAX is 4.5 bits per Hz at maximum modulation. Probably around 3.5 bits per Hz normally. So on a 5 MHz channel you've got 5 x 3.5 = 17.5 Mbps of capacity on the downstream. 10 MHz channels may also be deployed.

Each tower probably won't use all 100+ MHz that Clear has, but could use 60+ MHz if sectorized with no performance degradation due to spectrum reuse. Which, thanks to the propagation patterns of 2500MHz, is high.

Is that spectrum (100MHz that they have to use) per tower, per town, or for the whole US?

So if they use 5MHz for a tower, can they not reuse that for other towers/towns?

reply to iansltx
No antenna. Going to move it around the house and look for a better place for a better signal. Hell, Might even put it outside in a box for a better signal.

Did 1.5gigs of updates in 3 hours. No way in hell dial up would do that.
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High speed internet is on my road thanks to Clear 4G! F$*% you AT&T and TWC!

reply to powerspec88
Just like any other cellular provider (which they are, sorta) they can reuse their spectrum as long as they don't interfere too much with themselves...and they have a LOT of spectrum. I may be wrong on the actual numbers, but I think they have something like the whole 2500-2600MHz band or something similarly crazy.

reply to Duramax08
Have fun with your new broadband connection Wish I could get Clear up the road in Fredericksburg. We just got AT&T 3G there...

They say they are going to expand to citys out of san antonio. Who knows?

Well, Sprint was the first 3G provider with coverage in my town. One can only hope...

they say they are going to put towers 1.5 miles away from each other. then they will start extending it to others parts around san antonio then fill in a few dead zones.
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High speed internet is on my road thanks to Clear 4G! F$*% you AT&T and TWC!

Cool. I'll bet towers will be spaced farther apart in more rural areas, if they decide to cover any rural areas, but at 1.5 miles apart there should be PLENTY of capacity for mobile and fixed users.