Mental note: don't forget your laptop charger. LogMeIn isn't nearly as convenient as a not-dead MacBook sitting in front of you
Anyway, I tested out Clear's service in Kerrville at two locations, plus a meandering course in between. At 1101 Sidney Baker (a Dairy Queen) I hit -65 RSSI and a CNR in the high twenties. This climbed to the -50s and mid-thirties, respectively, when I retested at 901 Wheless Ave (corner of Wheless and Washington). In both cases, the tower's backhaul was the limiting factor, not my signal.
Speaking of towers, my best guess is that a water tower about 4500 feet southeast of the Wheless location (pretty much in line with the direction of the road at that point...gotta love line of sight) is where Clear has their gear. I think a paging company has some equipment on the tower as well, as do a few government entities and, until recently, a WISP trial of a local telephone cooperative.
As far as the backhaul side of things goes, if I didn't know better I'd say the Clear site was being backhauled via a 10M down, 1.5M up Time Warner Cable Business Class connection...over coax! I should've tried connecting to 192.168.100.1 via my modem just to make sure, but they would've tunneled through anything like that, right? More realistically, I'll bet they've got a 10M Ethernet over Copper circuit from Windstream feeding the site, for a total monthly cost somewhere south of $1000.
As you might imagine, speeds were highly variable, ranging from less than a megabit down and up to nearly 10 Mbps down and around 1 Mbps up. Latency was around 100-120ms...disregard the reading in this speedtest photo; I don't know what was going on there. Maybe a sudden spike in usage by Sprint WiMAX users "in the know"
Apparently Kerrville is in a different region than Austin (rtx...not sure what that stands for...instead of hou...maybe "rural Texas"?), because I pulled a completely different IP (50.11.148.119 vs. 71.xxx.xxx.xxx in Austin). Routing was also quite different; I was in Dallas just a couple hops after my modem, with some level of peering going on (to Google and Softlayer, for example) in addition to connectivity via Level3. Latency was actually worse than in Austin despite the more direct path to Dallas, but for a market that barely even exists (one protection site tower), I can't complain! Certainly wouldn't buy Clearwire service for use only in Kerrville though...the connection is far too variable to be worth $50 per month.
By the way, here are a few traceroutes that I took from the two locations (since both had good signals, it doesn't matter which...and I don't remember which anyway):
1 [AS8151] clearmodem (192.168.15.1) 2.060 ms 4.807 ms 3.114 ms
2 * * *
3 [AS65534] 10.41.233.165 (10.41.233.165) 182.998 ms 111.300 ms 145.183 ms
4 [AS16586] 71.22.6.205 (71.22.6.205) 123.153 ms 178.890 ms 177.733 ms
5 [AS3356] xe-9-2-0.edge9.dallas1.level3.net (4.59.118.21) 181.291 ms 107.429 ms 179.865 ms
6 [AS3356] ae-2-70.edge3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.72) 315.331 ms
å [AS3356] ae-1-60.edge3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.8) 192.928 ms
[AS3356] ae-4-90.edge3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.200) 273.569 ms
7 [AS3356] d.resolvers.level3.net (4.2.2.4) 139.143 ms 121.537 ms 130.066 ms
traceroute to hawkhost.com (208.43.49.44), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 [AS8151] clearmodem (192.168.15.1) 2.045 ms 1.868 ms 1.421 ms
2 * * *
3 [AS65534] 10.41.233.165 (10.41.233.165) 120.044 ms 99.783 ms 180.064 ms
4 [AS16586] 71.22.6.205 (71.22.6.205) 327.225 ms 179.341 ms 175.151 ms
5 [AS0] te1-5.bbr01.eq01.dal01.networklayer.com (206.223.118.24) 194.744 ms 121.145 ms 180.454 ms
6 [AS36351] ae0.dar01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.211) 194.481 ms
[AS36351] ae0.dar02.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.253) 94.447 ms 178.792 ms
7 [AS36351] po1.fcr04.sr05.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.214) 125.305 ms 133.381 ms
[AS36351] po2.fcr04.sr05.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.218) 169.869 ms
8 [AS36351] hawkhost.com (208.43.49.44) 103.506 ms 158.866 ms 124.973 ms
traceroute to google.com (74.125.227.142), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 [AS8151] clearmodem (192.168.15.1) 2.701 ms 1.622 ms 1.723 ms
2 * * *
3 [AS65534] 10.41.233.165 (10.41.233.165) 104.305 ms 96.642 ms 202.212 ms
4 [AS16586] 71.22.6.205 (71.22.6.205) 112.306 ms 113.720 ms 117.139 ms
5 [AS16586] 71.22.6.130 (71.22.6.130) 192.270 ms 109.067 ms 81.012 ms
6 [AS15169] 72.14.217.204 (72.14.217.204) 112.341 ms 111.849 ms 109.820 ms
7 [AS15169] 72.14.233.67 (72.14.233.67) 185.059 ms 182.437 ms 110.236 ms
8 [AS15169] 216.239.43.187 (216.239.43.187) 199.987 ms 109.281 ms 179.015 ms
9 [AS15169] dfw06s17-in-f14.1e100.net (74.125.227.142) 214.306 ms 108.706 ms 109.829 ms
Thus ends my investigation into Clear WiMAX for now...unless someone wants to buy me a day pass to check out connectivity in San Antonio