Take the average Starbucks and expand it by almost 1,200 square miles and you have the biggest wireless Internet hot spot in America. And right now, that’s Atlanta.
Or that is the boast of Clearwire Communications, which Tuesday officially launches its Clear 4G WiMAX service in Atlanta, though the system has been operating without publicity for about six weeks.
There are still holes in the huge footprint, which covers everything inside I-285 and more. Service is not yet available in parts of the Northside around Dunwoody and Sandy Springs and DeKalb County around Decatur. A complete network of transmitters that will close those gaps is still being installed, according to the company.
And there’s the sticker shock. Unlike wireless Internet offered largely free at almost 900 sites in metro Atlanta, Clear has a fairly steep price of entry.
To hook up a laptop requires a special USB modem, which goes for $59.99. There’s also a $35 activation fee and service subscription rates that start at $10 a day and go to $50 a month.
However, the system moves wifi service a step closer to making high definition, high speed internet programming — videos and streaming telecasts — as clear on remote laptops as internet and cable TV reception at home.
Rival AT&T plans to roll out its own 4G technology later this year as TV networks increasingly seek to channel their programming onto laptops and cell-phones through the Internet.
This is the third market for Clear, which has launched systems in Baltimore and Portland, Ore. But Atlanta is by far the biggest hot spot footprint, nearly twice the footprint size as Portland or Baltimore, which is about 700 square miles.
The Atlanta coverage area stretches to northern Cherokee County, to southern Henry County, and east on I-20 past Wesley Chapel Road and west on I-20 as far as Six Flags.
4G WiMAX technology, said Benny Bing, a research scientist at the Georgia Tech’s Broadband Institute, is faster than the 3G wireless air cards that many now use to access the Internet remotely.
With slower 3G, it’s more difficult to access streaming videos.
“The high-definition capability is the killer application [here],” said Bing, “because you can view it [videos and TV] everywhere you want, in the backyard, in the park, even in your car.”
During a demonstration last week, the system seemed glitch-free as a reporter watched streaming video on a laptop in an SUV while he and Clear publicists were driven around downtown Atlanta.
Clear executives declined to say how much they have invested in the Atlanta market, where they’ve been quietly installing towers and transmitters for the past two and a half years.
CEO William T. Morrow said the network would “change life in Atlanta” by giving residents unfettered access to the Web. But it’s still not perfect, said Atlantan John Jowers, who has been using the system about two weeks.
“I was up in Sandy Springs yesterday and couldn’t get a signal,” he said. “And I would not get rid of my AT&T 3G air card because there are places where Clear doesn’t go, like Birmingham or far outside Atlanta.”
But Clear enabled Jowers to download and watch a Netflix video remotely, “which I couldn’t do with my AT&T air card,” he said, as well as make overseas phone calls using the Skype Internet system, which he said wouldn’t work with his 3G air card.
Jeff Kagan, an Atlanta-based telecom analyst, said the system simply expands the universe of Wi-Fi from the small bubble of a Starbucks, for instance, to the bubble of “an entire city.”
Yet for all the mobility and speed of WiMAX — which is three or four times as fast as 3G air cards — there’s room for improvement, said Paul Kapustka, editor of Sidecut Reports, which tracks the telecommunications industry.
“This technology is as fast as DSL and you can get access remotely, but it’s not as fast as cable internet hookup,” said Kapuska. “It’s sort of the third choice between them.”
Labels: Atlanta, clearwire communications, Georgia, wifi, WiMax, wireless hotspot
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Brian Vanderhoff @ 10:01 AM
