Clear Mobile WiMAX in Portland : On-the-Spot Speedtest 2

Last month we featured speedtest of fixed WiMAX service (Clear’s Home internet plans) in Portland .The result was Clear get 3031Kbps (download), 383 Kbps (upload).

At this time we want to share you two stories of Clear Mobile WiMAX service on the spot Speedtest in Portland.

Oregon blogger,Marc Wallis had experience high speed computing with WiMAX in the car during the rain somewhere in Portland.
He used his laptop, plug Motorola USBw100 WiMAX modem into it…and what did he get ? He got WiMAX signal between 1MB and 3MB download (using dlsreports.com speed test).Still got high speed internet, even tough during the rain.

Another story came from OregonLive’s reporter,Mike Rogoway. He shared experience of Clear mobile WiMAX service from eight locations around the metro area.

Here’s what Mike found,

Connection speeds were quite variable, from 3.7mbps downloads in downtown Portland to no connection at all over in Gresham (the company advertises downloads of 4mbps, but just about every broadband connection is slower than advertised).

  • Indoor coverage is also spotty. I had no service at all inside my SE Portland home, but an excellent connection on the fourth floor of The Oregonian’s newsroom downtown. If you’re going to be connecting indoors most of the time, you may want to consider the company’s home service (which I haven’t tried).
  • Clearwire doesn’t launch its Clear brand WiMAX service ’til Tuesday. The number of customers may rise quickly after that, along with demands on the network. So it may be that speeds slow up as the load increases. (Though Clearwire assures me it has plenty of capacity in Portland.)

OK, some details…

The eight locations I tested were: Downtown Portland; inner SE Portland; inside my home in inner SE; Mount Tabor; North Portland (Interstate & Rosa Parks Way); Gresham (181st & Halsey); downtown Vancouver; and HP’s east Vancouver campus (which is shuttered for the holidays — I parked in the driveway).

Of the six places where I found Clearwire coverage (again, my home and Gresham drew blanks), my download speeds averaged 1.9mbps. Uploads averaged 210kbps.

For comparison (and I realize it’s not exactly apples and apples), I speed-tested my iPhone on AT&T’s 3G network at each of those six locations. My average iPhone download speed was 423kbps. (Incidentally, my iPhone found AT&T’s 3G network in all eight locations — coverage is much better than when I bought the thing in July.)

So on average, Clearwire was 4.5x faster than my iPhone.

The best Clearwire coverage was in downtown and North Portland (downloads of 3.7mbps and 3.3 mbps, respectively)

That was good service from Clear, hopefully it will get better and better in all areas after Clear WiMAX official launch in Portland on the next Tuesday, January 6,2009.

Via Marc’s blog , OregonLive’s blog

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