CLEAR vs Broadband

[Freis968]

These guys at Best Buy representing CLEAR were telling me how great and how much better their internet provider is than my current broadband provider. I told them that I was getting close to 30mbps up and 2mbps down and that even though their numbers were not high like that due to their NO latency those up and down numbers don't matter. I guess they did a good job presenting because I signed up for a 2 week trial ALL of my money back if not satisfied deal. I paid $50.30 came home and connected up the CLEAR modem and although it was snappy it was no way as fast as my broadband connection. At any rate, shown here are the numbers I pulled on speedtest.net of the CLEAR speedtest and my broadband speedtest.

What can you all tell me about CLEAR vs broadband and were the guys there pulling the wool over my eyes?

http://www.clear.com is the website by the way.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Clear I believe uses WiMax techology. In laymons terms it is wireless broadband. You can move location to location and set it up. You are not tied down to a single address.

 

[belvdr]

You also need to test closest to your point of entry to the Internet. The test for Clear is some 2500 miles away. That could possibly skew the numbers, especially the ping, but not by much.

 

[yg17]

Wait, they tried to say that their service had no latency, and that because of no latency, download and upload speeds don't matter?

What a crock of ****. Even if you could defy the laws of physics and have no latency, it still doesn't affect download speeds. That's why satellites are used for live interviews with another person halfway across the country or halfway around the world. There is a latency, quite obvious when one person is interviewing another, but you can beam a full high definition picture from the remote location back to the studio. Or you can use a broadband connection to link the two locations, and lose the latency, but not have enough bandwidth to reliably carry the signal, especially if the remote location is in a 3rd world country.

In purely internet terms, if Clear had a 10ms latency with 5mbps download, and your cable ISP has 70ms latency with 20mbps donwload, what that would mean is when you request a file to be downloaded from a remote server, on Clear, the file would start coming to you 10ms after the request is sent (not taking into account other factors like the remote server's connection or how long it takes your browser to actually process the request), and come in at 5mbps. On cable, the file would take 70ms to start coming to you, but would come in at 20mbps. So Clear would have a 60ms head start, but your cable ISP would quickly catch up and beat Clear by a mile. So in other words, the folks at Best Buy flat out lied to you. Not surprised. Par for the course at Best Buy.

FWIW, the blink of a human eye is around 300ms. So the difference in latency between Clear and your cable ISP is too short to even be noticed by humans.

 

[designs216]

WiMax is still new to most markets and, I believe, still working the kinks out of their service. When I compared Clear to my current cable modem service there was no compelling reason to switch. Nevertheless, I'm optimistic that this third provider/competitor will in the future help break up the duopoly that has existed here for years and finally bring broadband prices down from the stratosphere.

 

[yg17]

WiMax is still new to most markets and, I believe, still working the kinks out of their service. When I compared Clear to my current cable modem service there was no compelling reason to switch. Nevertheless, I'm optimistic that this third provider/competitor will in the future help break up the duopoly that has existed here for years and finally bring broadband prices down from the stratosphere.

I don't think WiMax/Clear, even when all the kinks and bugs are worked out, is designed to replace cable or FTTH/FTTN services. Those will always be faster, more reliable and better. Clear is for people who don't have any landline based broadband options at home, or who have a need for a fast broadband connection on the go in their laptop.

The thing that strikes me as odd is that the first case, people who can't get cable, DSL or fiber, are likely living out in the rural areas where Clear isn't deployed yet anyways. Right now they're just in the big cities where most everyone has multiple broadband options. I think if Clear wanted to get customers, they should've started their buildout in rural areas where some people are still only able to get dial up. Would I replace my U-verse service I have right now with Clear? Absolutely not. If I lived in Bum**** Egypt and had dial up, would I replace that with Clear? Absolutely. I'd be the first person in line at Best Buy even if the salesmen are lying scumbags.