Comments on: Free report: A look inside Clearwire’s network

By: Valentino

Valentino — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:37:07 +0000

Steve,

As a CLEAR Dealer I would like to know where your service has been unstable? I may be able to help if I could get more info. have you also called 888-888-3113 to get customer support to correct the problem?
I have several customers that are satisfied and have no problem with the signal, so I want to help you in your concerns.
I am hoping you have found a fix to your issues, if not contact me and I will do my best to help.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:33:17 +0000

Be careful, since my upgrade to Clear (formerly Clearwire) WiMax I’ve had nothing but terrible performance.

High latency and heavy packet loss for several weeks now.

The service is mostly unusable.

By: Paul Kapustka

Paul Kapustka — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:20:07 +0000

CS, thanks for your kind comments. But unless you offer some proof behind them, they’re just your opinions.

On the interoperability question — both Dr. Saw and Motorola’s Bruce Brda said that theoretically 3G gear is supposed to interoperate, but in practice most installations are single-vendor. Unless you have keys to a site and are willing to show us something different, I will err on the side of their expertise.

Voice is a concern at the tower site because it needs its own gear; unless the telcos are renting those buildings as apartments, *something* is taking up all that space.

In terms of 3G using fiber to the antennas — every site I have seen has thick coax going up the tower from the cell equipment shed. Again, maybe you know differently but all the evidence I have seen and all the information smart folks like Saw and Brda (and others in the industry) point in the other direction. And almost everyone agrees, WiMax sites are indeed cheaper to build and operate.

On the spectrum side — look for another report soon. Not sure what you mean by the “fairness” of the US regulatory process, but if it’s like any of your earlier arguments it’s probably not based on a lot of fact.

By: CS Puglio

CS Puglio — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:15:36 +0000

Man, is this report chock-full of errors.
Some quotes:
“In cellular 2G or 3G data implementations, Clearwire’s Saw said that a single vendor almost always provided all the different pieces of gear needed, often at a premium cost. “What we wanted to do with Clearwire was break the monopoly between the base
station provider and the gateway provider,” Saw said. “In a 3G network these are always supplied by the same vendor, making you beholden to a Nokia or an Ericsson. Even though the spec says they are supposed to talk to other companies’ products, they do not interact.”"
Totally false!
All big 3G operators have multiple vendors for the access network, and necessarily _proven_ interworking with different vendor core network equipment.

“Since Clearwire is building a data-only network, its tower-site infrastructure needs are much simpler than cellular”
Voice and data traffic are separated in the core network. What does voice support have to do with the tower-site?

“”since we use fiber to the antennas, not coax, we don’t weigh down the towers,” Saw said”
Almost all (if not all) 3G suppliers have fiber to the antenna solutions.
In fact there is no reason to expect a wimax site to be cheaper than a 3G site.

The interesting part of the report – and on which it spends the most time – is the large swath of spectrum – 150 Mhz – that Clearwire has in the 2.5 GHz band. That certainly is an advantage compared to most 3G operators which have 10 or 15 MHz.
Makes you wonder, though, about the fairness of the US regulatory process.