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Questions About Clear/Clearwire


markjcc

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http://www.clearwire.com/company/featured-story

 

This is the year we begin overlaying LTE Advanced-ready technology on our 4G WiMAX network. The technical trials are complete and we’re looking at an initial implementation of our LTE network that aims to target densely populated, urban areas of our existing 4G markets where current usage demands are high. New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle will be among the 31 cities where we will launch our TDD-LTE network during the first half of 2013

Since hawaii is a clear/clearwire market does that mean Hawaii gets LTE during the fist half of 2013?

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The majority of existing clearwire markets will get LTE rolled out because they're already invested in the towers and the back haul and it's a waste of money to not do so. They will also deploy where demand happens to be which is basically metropoloitan areas where sprint has deemed to be of very high demand and need additional bandwith to satisfy the needs of the hungry masses.

 

Initial rollout should coincide with that of Sprints LTE 800 rollout which is the summer of 2013.

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The majority of existing clearwire markets will get LTE rolled out because they're already invested in the towers and the back haul and it's a waste of money to not do so. They will also deploy where demand happens to be which is basically metropoloitan areas where sprint has deemed to be of very high demand and need additional bandwith to satisfy the needs of the hungry masses.

 

Initial rollout should coincide with that of Sprints LTE 800 rollout which is the summer of 2013.

 

This sounds good. However, most of Clearwire's backhaul needs to be upgraded for LTE deployment. Most of Clearwire's existing backhaul connections are maxed out or nearly maxed out with just their current WiMax loads. Adding a large LTE channel to existing backhaul would provide mediocre LTE performance.

 

And since Clearwire's LTE is being designed to run as high as 60-90Mbps speeds, most of the current MW backhaul system cannot even come close to handling that kind of throughput. Clearwire is doing a lot to upgrade backhaul currently. And its probably a portion of why their WiMax speeds are being reported as improving in isolated locations.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

 

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This sounds good. However, most of Clearwire's backhaul needs to be upgraded for LTE deployment. Most of Clearwire's existing backhaul connections are maxed out or nearly maxed out with just their current WiMax loads. Adding a large LTE channel to existing backhaul would provide mediocre LTE performance.

 

And since Clearwire's LTE is being designed to run as high as 60-90Mbps speeds, most of the current MW backhaul system cannot even come close to handling that kind of throughput. Clearwire is doing a lot to upgrade backhaul currently. And its probably a portion of why their WiMax speeds are being reported as improving in isolated locations.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

Indeed they have improved. I wondered why. I assumed it was migration of customers to LTE devices. Combine what you said with that fact and I guess that's most of the answer. Hey, it's an added benefit for those of us still on Wimax devices.

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Indeed they have improved. I wondered why. I assumed it was migration of customers to LTE devices. Combine what you said with that fact and I guess that's most of the answer. Hey, it's an added benefit for those of us still on Wimax devices.

 

P.S. In the isolated locations where I do get Wimax, it is usually 10-12 mbps. Not too shabby at all.

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Indeed they have improved. I wondered why. I assumed it was migration of customers to LTE devices. Combine what you said with that fact and I guess that's most of the answer. Hey, it's an added benefit for those of us still on Wimax devices.

 

I don't think the loss of WiMax customers is as steep as it may seem when combined with the adds from Virgin, Boost, FreedomPOP and MVNO's. I'm sure its gone down, but not astronomically. I bet losses in Clearwire home subscribers is actually a bigger factor, as those people are a much bigger burden on the network than smartphone users.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

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I bet losses in Clearwire home subscribers is actually a bigger factor, as those people are a much bigger burden on the network than smartphone users.

 

From experience, I highly doubt that, because clearwire quickly throttles wimax home users down to ~1.5 meg speeds if you attempt to download anything over 50-100 megs or stream anything more than a few minutes long.

 

Ironically, the portable hotspots did not seem to be so aggressively throttled.

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From experience, I highly doubt that, because clearwire quickly throttles wimax home users down to ~1.5 meg speeds if you attempt to download anything over 50-100 megs or stream anything more than a few minutes long.

 

 

They do? I've never seen that happen at my parents, they have been using Clear for home phone and internet since 2010.

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I bought a clear hub express after having a decently good service via the hotspot voyager, the modem lasted about a day before it they started to throttle from 7-10 meg to 1.5 flat.

 

Streaming hulu/netflix, or downloading some android games 100-300 megs, or steam updates would kill it.

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I bought a clear hub express after having a decently good service via the hotspot voyager, the modem lasted about a day before it they started to throttle from 7-10 meg to 1.5 flat.

 

Streaming hulu/netflix, or downloading some android games 100-300 megs, or steam updates would kill it.

 

Odd, I can watch Hulu/Netflix all day long with no problem with other users online, and have never seen the download speeds drop below 2Mbps, and that's during the afternoon. Evening and nights I always see 8-10+.

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Strange, perhaps its a difference in plan provisioning (had the new 50/month, no phone service plan), or the tower in my area was considered more 'congested'.

 

But the hotspot had nearly the same loads previously and I never noticed any throttling, which was why I bought the home modem.

 

I do know that years ago I tried clear (right after the original evo 4g came out) and experienced even worse throttling then, so it was better, but still not acceptable.

 

I have never experienced any known throttling on my evo's either, which of course use the same wimax network/towers.

Edited by dedub
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I have heard several people complain of Clearwire throttling, and I have heard others say they can do almost whatever they want without throttling. They may institute throttling on people who have consistent high usage, or at least what they constitute high usage. Also, they may only institute throttling on a site specific basis...like when a site performance starts to suffer.

 

Although 1.5Mbps speeds will not really deter usage much. Maybe performance was just suffering under load and not being throttled at all?

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

 

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nah it was definately artificially throttled, flat lining @ ~1.5mbs, much like how evo/wimax upstream speed is capped.

 

basically they have 2 tiers, the 35$ 1.5meg plan, and the 50$ 'unlimited' speed plan, using whatever triggers they use, if you trigger them it basically caps your 'unlimited' speed to the 1.5 meg speed.

 

but it only seemed to apply to the home modem, the clear spot sitting next to the modem was unaffected.

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nah it was definately artificially throttled, flat lining @ ~1.5mbs, much like how evo/wimax upstream speed is capped.

 

basically they have 2 tiers, the 35$ 1.5meg plan, and the 50$ 'unlimited' speed plan, using whatever triggers they use, if you trigger them it basically caps your 'unlimited' speed to the 1.5 meg speed.

 

but it only seemed to apply to the home modem, the clear spot sitting next to the modem was unaffected.

Strange, i have the clear hub express and used 500GB+ last month and my speeds are still great 13Mb/s or so until it reach's night where there is 'Congestion time' as clear says and people on this forum,.

 

But the problem with clearwire is that the backhaul or their ISP transit providers suck

as i get 13Mb/s local but youtube 720P load's slow as my DSL gets 4Mb/s Download and 720P videos load more faster.

Edited by markjcc
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  • 3 weeks later...

Strange, i have the clear hub express and used 500GB+ last month and my speeds are still great 13Mb/s or so until it reach's night where there is 'Congestion time' as clear says and people on this forum,.

 

But the problem with clearwire is that the backhaul or their ISP transit providers suck

as i get 13Mb/s local but youtube 720P load's slow as my DSL gets 4Mb/s Download and 720P videos load more faster.

 

That may be because of wimax having a higher ping time than your dsl.

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That may be because of wimax having a higher ping time than your dsl.

 

Nope. While very high latency will impact data delivery speed, the latency of Clear WiMAX isn't in that league.

 

We're definitely talking about transit/peering arrangements in this case; I've seen something similar even with a 50 Mbps Comcast cable connection that had good latency 98 percent of the time.

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

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  • 4 months later...

From experience, I highly doubt that, because clearwire quickly throttles wimax home users down to ~1.5 meg speeds if you attempt to download anything over 50-100 megs or stream anything more than a few minutes long.

 

Ironically, the portable hotspots did not seem to be so aggressively throttled.

 

Oh, That's why a Sprint Hotspot's WiMax is so much faster than Clear's home modem

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Strange, i have the clear hub express and used 500GB+ last month and my speeds are still great 13Mb/s or so until it reach's night where there is 'Congestion time' as clear says and people on this forum,.

 

But the problem with clearwire is that the backhaul or their ISP transit providers suck

as i get 13Mb/s local but youtube 720P load's slow as my DSL gets 4Mb/s Download and 720P videos load more faster.

As my traceroute shows, they dump most of their transit route to Level3. Why not using SprintLink? This is something I don't understand.

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