Clear

[Jonathan]

I got a 5Mbps home/4Mbps mobile (heavily discounted) Clear account yesterday.

http://www.clear.com/

I am now looking for awesome suggestions for what I should do while on the train with a broadband Internet-connected laptop. Eve is top of the list.

Hmm, perhaps Skype? I'll have to look into that.

[Jonathan]

Hmm, okay, the website says it's

Down: 6 Mbps home / 4 Mbps mobile
Up: 512 Kbps home / 384 Kbps mobile

Maybe I forgot how fast the literature said was it supposed to be.

[quantus]

If you never leave Portland, then you don't need a cellphone or a data plan... Just use Skype and you computer. Is Clear independent of cell phone carriers?

[Alan]

when I read the thread title I thought you had become a scientologist

[Jonathan]

Is Clear independent of cell phone carriers?

Well, Sprint owns about 51% of the company. But it's an independent company.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2 ... imax_N.htm

[quantus]

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/s ... aily7.html

Other markets expected to get CLEAR service this year include Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia and Seattle. Markets targeted for 2010 launch dates include New York, Boston, Washington, Houston and the San Francisco Bay area.

Yay, we're gonna get wimax.

[Jonathan]

Review!

Home: In our downtown apartment the signal is always five bars. In my brief tests on the wire to the modem, I saw exactly the advertised throughput. Uptime has not been an issue. I believe I have some issues with the "last ten feet" in the WiFi link to our computers, so I'll skip my day-to-day experiences for now.

Mobile: I consistently lose connection between the Beaverton Central and Milikan Way train stops (these are next to each other) when I use my laptop on the train. A friend at work confirms he drops link there, too. I am not sure if it is a handshaking problem as I transfer from tower to tower or if they have a dead spot in their coverage, but it's a real pain in the ass. I used to have some other shaky spots past Milikan Way, but lately those have not been giving me a problem. Perhaps they are shaking out issues in their backend.

In the places I go daily, the signal strength is always great. I have heard that places out in the country or hills have issues with signal, but down here in the heavily populated valley areas it's great.

[quantus]

I think Portland would be harder to cover than here, except for up in the hills of the peninsula. The harder part of covering here is just the sheer area that needs to be covered. What's the terrain like between Beaverton Central and Milikan Way train stops. Buildings? Hills? Flat and open?

I wonder if they'll cover the BART tunnel under the bay. RIght now, there's no cell phone coverage down there, so I'm kinda doubting it, but it would be awesome if they did. Also, I hope they cover the salt marshes near where Amtrak goes through that area since it's a bit dead of cell phone coverage currently. They should have an easy time covering the east bay where I live since it's very flat and a pretty narrow area between the bay and the mountains.

[Jonathan]

Thing to do on the train: play Eve!

Actually, Eve underscores how often the connection drops momentarily. It's really not noticeable while surfing, because you don't need reliability to surf (as long as the downtime is short). However, I would never fly anywhere I could get shot while on the train because I'm guaranteed to lose connection three or four times.

All of Portland is in the Willamette River Valley. All of Beaverton and Hillsboro is in the Tualatin River Valley. It's pretty flat country, mostly farmland or mildly dense city (not multistory but lots of people). There's a line of ~2000 ft wooded hills between the valleys. Beaverton Central and Millikan Way are next to some car dealerships and townhomes.