Hasta La Gadget!

Clearwire (along with Sprint and Comcast, just to name a couple) has been fiercely expanding its WiMAX network across America for months on end now, and while select citizens in select cities have had access to the 4G superhighway for just over a year, we haven’t actually had the opportunity to find ourselves in one of those locations for any amount of time. Until recently, that is. The Clear 4G service was lit up in Las Vegas late last year, which gave the Engadget squad just enough time to scrounge up a gaggle of Motorola 4G USB sticks and really test out the network while at CES. Meanwhile, the North Carolinians among us were also able to test the boundaries of the 4G patches that have been setup here, and we’re finally ready to dish out a few opinions on the fourth generation of cellular data. Eager to know if it’s the best thing since sliced bread the invention of the MP3? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Clear WiMAX USB modem impressions

Clear WiMAX USB modem impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You know what’s great? My smartphone puts the world in my pocket. Broadband puts 2,454,399 channels on my HDTV. I can access the internet from a freaking airplane! You know what’s unsustainable? Paying for it all.

Here’s why: a well-equipped geek will, in our research, have a subscription and service bill total of between 200 and 750 dollars a month.

Let me break it down. You’ve got your smartphone bill, your cable bill, your home broadband bill. Those are unavoidable expenses—there’s not much you can do about them.

Then think about the must-have gadgets on the horizon: a smartbook that requires a data plan. A tablet that’ll require Wi-Fi HotSpot access or a 3G dongle. The same for a thin-and-light notebook. And those are just your 1:1 service fees for devices.

Now throw in all of the wonderful content and service subscriptions you either already have or will soon. You’ve got TiVo, which is better and cheaper than most cable-provided DVRs but still about $11 a month. Netflix, to rent or stream unlimited movies. Hulu’s free for now, but we know they’re going to start charging any week. If you’ve got an Xbox 360, you’ve got an Xbox Live Gold membership. I’m a city slicker with no car, but if I had one I’d need a navigation app that’s good enough for everyday use. A free Flickr membership is fine today, but once HD camcorders gain prominence, you’re going to want a Flickr Pro membership for high-def playback. And so on.

If that doesn’t sound so bad, see how it looks when you add it all up:

That’s right: if you want to stay even close to fully connected, you’re expected to cough up nearly $1,000 a month. Not for hardware. For fees. And that doesn’t even include niche services like Vimeo and Zune Pass, or one-off purchases like eBooks or iTunes downloads. Or, god forbid, food and shelter.

A couple of years ago, we talked about the Infinite Video Format War, and the dozen-plus disc-free video formats that each come with their own subscription models, fees, and offerings. There’s still no resolution there. Think of the Subscription War like that, only extrapolated across all of your devices, content, and services.

The problem isn’t subscriptions themselves. Content subscriptions reward risk-taking, which is great! How many movies have you discovered because of a Netflix recommendation? How many shows have you watched on Hulu that you never would have found on your TV’s channel guide? And individually, they seem cost effective.

The problem is fragmentation. The problem is that each service provider thinks within a bubble, without recognizing the larger ecosystem of payments we live in. It’s like those nights in high school when each teacher would assign you two hours of homework. There weren’t enough hours in the day then, and there’s not enough money in a paycheck now. And there shouldn’t have to be.

There are some ways out: you don’t actually need cable or satellite TV to enjoy your favorite shows. If you’ve got a smartphone, you really don’t need a land line, and you can probably get away with the minimum 450 minutes if you lean on messaging and Skype. There are also free navigation apps that’ll work in a pinch. But at the end of the day, you’re still looking at hundreds of dollars a month for services you don’t need constant access to.

So what’s the answer? Well, ad-supported content generally comes free or highly discounted. But ad-supported solutions require people to purchase the things being advertised. Hulu’s plans to start charging indicates that that model’s not sustainable in the long run. One blanket subscription that lets you access several different sites or services works for the online porn industry, but those linked sites all operate under the same umbrella parent company. Not feasible when the participants are major competitors.

The honest answer is that there may not be one. Not yet, anyway. Eventually the monthly bills will stack up so high that people will have to start cutting ties with companies, who will in turn have to either lower prices or fade away. You’ve already started to see it with AT&T and Verizon cutting prices on unlimited plans last week. Until everyone gets on board, though? We’re all just casualties.

Verizon Wireless has updated its LTE specs and released them to developers ahead of the carrier’s 4G rollout beginning next year, according to FierceWireless. The specs cover network access, SMS requirements, and data retry test plans, plus the carrier’s device approval process.

As part of its initial LTE deployment, Verizon is expected to launch USB modems and other connected devices in 25 to 30 markets sometime in the second half of 2010. It’s likely we won’t see LTE-capable smartphones until 2011, the report said.

So far, TeliaSonera is the only 4G provider to have powered up a commercial LTE network. (It’s in Stockholm.) LTE is expected to deliver average real-world data speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps for downloads, and 2 to 5 Mbps for uploads. There’s no word yet on pricing plans or data caps, according to the report.

Industry rifts remain over certain LTE-related specs, such as the transmission of voice and text messages over LTE. Verizon and AT&T are supporting One Voice, while T-Mobile has pledged support for VoLGA (Voice over LTE via Generic Access).

Talk about making good on a promise… and then some. Back in March, Ericsson proudly proclaimed that it would be able to make 21Mbps look like child’s play by reaching 28Mbps before the dawn of 2010, and now the company is tooting its horn once more after demonstrating 42Mbps equipment to common folk over in Stockholm, Sweden. Reportedly, it’s the planet’s first 42Mbps HSPA achievement on commercial products, and better still, it’s now available for mass deployment. Unfortunately, details beyond that were few and far between — we’re guessing Ericsson just needed an avenue to gloat — but we suspect carriers like Telstra will be pushing out their own releases once the upgrades start rolling out. Granted, we’ve seen mobile data rates tickle the 42Mbps mark before, but those showcases were hardly ready for public consumption. Meanwhile, Verizon and AT&T are spending bundles arguing about their comparatively glacial “3G networks.” Way to go, America.

Ericsson demos 42Mbps HSPA Evolution for the laypeople originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Swedish cell phone carrier TeliaSonera has powered up what it calls the world’s first commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G network in Stockholm, accessible via Samsung cellular USB modems.

The Ericsson-supplied network supposedly can run up to 100 Mbps when maxed out, though real-world speeds will be nowhere near that number.

Last month, several major telecoms around the world–including TeliaSonera, Orange, AT&T, Telefonica, Verizon, and others–finally agreed on a standard for voice and SMS communication over LTE 4G networks, in an effort to ensure that they’re used for more than just faster Web browsing and other data services.

Verizon is still expected to be first out of the gate with LTE in the U.S. sometime in the second half of 2010.