At last: Portland is CLEAR!
Eager Portland techies have been using Clearwire's Clear WiMAX network for about a month now, but the official unveiling of the new service didn't come until today. It is only the second US market to have officially sanctioned WiMAX - Baltimore being the other, of course - and the first launched by the brand spankin' new Clearwire.
With their 3+ billions of dollars of investment money and access to all of the WiMAX-related assets accumulated by Sprint, Clearwire is looking to aggressively expand from just offering services in Portland and Baltimore to many other regions of the country in 2009. Over the past several years Clearwire has deployed "pre-WiMAX" networks in about 40 markets, and those will likely be some of the first to join Portland and Baltimore as Clear areas. Additionally, Sprint's now-defunct XOHM network (which is being taken over by the Clear brand) is available unofficially in DC, Dallas, and Philadelphia, so it is also expected that Clear will roll their brand out there this year.
Right now, the pricing for Clear service is pretty affordable - you can get home service for as low as $20/month at their lowest speed tier, and unlimited home use at 6.0 Mbps/512 Kbps speeds is just $40/month (you can read more about the pricing plans in this article: Clearwire's Plans and Products). While those prices are nice, and compete easily with DSL and cable, Clear prices might go down as their network expands. Clearwire's chief strategy officer Scott Richardson says that the available plans as well as their cost will be adjusted based on feedback they receive from users in Portland and Baltimore. Another interesting product they will be offering soon is an adapter they're calling the Clear Voice Adapter, which will hook your landline (who still has one?) to the Clear home modem and allow users to make unlimited calls within the US via VOIP for just $25/month.
The official launch of Clear also means that a launch for Sprint 4G - which will use Clear's network - should be coming soon! Stay tuned...
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