My Clearwire (Clear, Sprint 4G, Comcast 4G) stock is down 50% from when I bought it. There's a Clear store in the city here (Philadelphia is 100% covered by 4G) and in the malls in the area. I've never seen a customer walk inside any of them. They set up tables to demo Clear 4G on netbooks outside, and nobody ever walks up to it. I am not confident WiMax is going to catch on any time soon, unfortunately.
4G is in the very, very early stages, like mobile phones when they were huge suitcase-size devices.
With that in mind, Clear's options are simply not very compelling. They charge a lot of money for a very tiny coverage area. Clear charges more depending on whether you buy a "home" plan or "mobile" plan. The "mobile" plan is significantly more expensive. But the "home" plan is not guaranteed to work indoors, even though they give you equipment that requires AC power. What a scam.
Sprint's plan is better; their 3G network is everywhere and is included with the 4G plans. (Or rather, 4G is a no-cost add-on for their 3G plans.) This is more compelling because Sprint 3G is everywhere, and their network is pretty solid. I get much faster speeds on Sprint's 3G network compared to what I got on T-Mobile or AT&T. (And like I said, when I do get a good 4G signal, it beats my 6M/768k DSL. In fact, with a bad signal, I usually get something like 1.5M/1.5M, which still beats my DSL in one direction.)
As the wireless carriers move from 3G to 4G to take load off the 3G network, I think 4G will become as popular as 3G. But relying on early-adopters paying $40 for worthless coverage is not a great business model. And relying on people to use wireless broadband when the fine print advises, "not guaranteed to work inside buildings" is also stupid. Why pay more money for a slower connection that's not guaranteed to work like copper?
That's why nobody is in the Clear store. Anyone with $60 month to spend on wireless broadband just uses Sprint, and everyone else just tethers their phone because they only use wireless broadband once a year.
I've had Clear for a few years at my office. Its gotten a bit faster recently, but the latency is still terrible. It will also arbitrarily cut out for a few hours with no explanation.
Unfortunately, there are no better deals for business internet around here, unless you're willing to pay $400/month to TWC. But if you have any option, do not sign-up for Clear.
WiMax can not possibly provide 100Mbps to many people. It can't even do it to a small number.
There is a reason it's expensive: they can not provide service to large number of people at once, instead they aim for high speed to a small number, and you pay for it.
Additionally the farther you are from the base station, the slower the speeds. To provide even decent speeds to lots of people you need many many base stations.
