Comment

Comment by Brett on March 10, 2011 at 4:06pm

This just in: Clearwire has a class action lawsuit filed against it for throttlin..., when they claim there's a minimum speed of 1Mbit.  Even 1Mbit is worse than DSL offerings from a decade ago (in 1998, I had 1.5Mbit DSL.)

The 4G infrastructure in Boston is VERY poor (when they say it's "available", they mean that it's available in SOME places and the radio connection might be 4G, but the connection between the tower and the internet may not be fast enough to give you anywhere near 4G speeds.)  Wireless connections will NEVER have as much bandwidth, lower latency, or better reliability compared to a wired connection.

Comment by Joseph Porcelli (Chief Neighbor) on March 9, 2011 at 1:48pm

Many wireless carriers now also offer 4g devices for home. Verizon's LTE 4G is supposed to be very fast and they are supposed release 4g home routers and mobile phones this month (I will get one). I have sprint now, and it's been fine but runs on wimax which is slower than LTE I believe. Let us know what you find. Bretts point about latency should be carefully considered. 

Comment by Brett on March 7, 2011 at 2:44pm

Hi Loay: Clear merged with Sprint (who is the majority shareholder. Something you may find relevant: Comcast is another significant shareholder) and I believe their networks are shared, so I would suggest looking at Sprint's 4G coverage in the area. There are a variety of user-data-based coverage mappers - I posted about these a few weeks ago here on NfN. Ask a friend with a Sprint 4G phone to run Speedtest.net's app or the FCC bandwidth-testing app at your house, both indoors and out, in a couple of locations.

In general, you'll find wireless broadband to have much higher latency (which will really impact how interactive web surfing "feels"), inconsistent speeds, etc.