Clearwire Comes out Swinging At Verizon with 4G Comparison Chart
December 1st, 2010 by Brian Oliver Bennett, LAPTOP Senior Writer 
Clearwire, the folks behind Sprint’s 4G WiMax network, have just taken the gloves off. Responding to Verizon’s announcement today of its upcoming LTE pricing and coverage areas, Clearwire distributed a chart comparing Clear favorably to its mortal 4G enemy. Click here for for full chart PDF.
Clear’s main argument is that its monthly pricing is cheaper, at $45, and offers unlimited data access compared with Verizon’s LTE service which costs $50 for 5GB and $80 for 10GB. The company also goes on to stress that its network technology inherently has more bandwidth and capacity to handle spiking demand while providing comparable average throughput speeds.
Furthermore, Clearwire touts the number of available handsets using its system as opposed to its rival. Of course you can bet that this will change dramatically as a plethora of new devices, from tablets to smart phones, will likely jump on the LTE bandwagon, hopefully as soon as CES in January. Our own initial hands-on with Verizon’s LTE service via USB modem revealed smoking results. We’ll report back as we learn more.
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December 1st, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Heads up- CLEAR has also pushed out a blog post written by its CCO Mike Sievert that adds some color to what is included in the chart: http://www.clear.com/blog/2010/12/01/the-chicken-soup-debate/
December 1st, 2010 at 10:28 pm
I know Clear’s management and John Saw do not want to over promise, but they are seriously low balling their estimates on download speeds. Clear and Sprint (depending on which literature you read) say real world *averages* between 3-6 and sometimes they say 5-7. But for me, I *average) 9-11mbps all day every day and I get peaks up to 13mbps (see www. speedtest .net/result/1018747693.png). There are youtube videos of customers in New York consistently getting 12mbps. With the upgrades Sprint/Clear have made to the Wimax network this year alone, the new max appears to be around 15mbps. It will be interesting to see if Verizon can keep up these speeds when they have more than 100 total customers in America on their network. Considering they only have 10Mhz total 700mhz spectrum they can dedicate to downlink in most areas, I think they are going to fall off VERY quickly once they have some popular devices.