Hasta La Gadget!

Oh sure, we’ve seen the occasional big city train get their own WiFi / WiMAX installation, but when a state like New Mexico steps up and does it, we take notice. The New Mexico Rail Runner, which travels some 95 miles between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, is now lit with WiMAX along the entire route, and the service is being provided gratis for all who ride. Better still, the New Mexico Mid-Region Council of Governments has no intentions of ever charging patrons in order to recoup the $2.4 million investment. We’re told that users can expect download rates of up to 6Mbps and upload speeds nearing 4Mbps, and we’re desperately hopeful that other states will take notice and attempt to get with the program. America’s already way behind most every European nation when it comes to rail travel, but toss a “free WiMAX!” sign on the door and you just might coax these car-lovin’ Yanks into going mass transit.

[Thanks, Ben]

New Mexico Rail Runner train gets lit with WiMAX, sets a good example originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clearwire has made it crystal clear that it isn’t taking a “WiMAX or die” approach to 4G — and frankly, it couldn’t afford to, considering that the infrastructure suppliers and hardware manufacturers could easily continue their trend toward shunning the next-gen underdog. What’s interesting, though, is that the company now appears to be taking a very active role in developing an LTE-based standard that could supplant WiMAX in its 2.6GHz spectrum should the need arise. Along with Motorola, Huawei, ZTE, Cisco, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, and — surprise, surprise — Clearwire partner Sprint, the company is asking the 3GPP to define a standard for running TD-LTE in the 2.6GHz slot. Unlike the more commonly-used FD-LTE — the standard Verizon is using, among others — TD-LTE operates unpaired, meaning it can operate in slimmer chunks of spectrum than its counterpart. Asking for a standard is clearly a far cry from actually building out a network, but it’s interesting to note that Clearwire and Sprint alike both have their eyes firmly fixed on an LTE-based technology if the WiMAX industry packs it in.

Sprint, Clearwire among companies asking for TD-LTE standard in WiMAX spectrum originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clearwire on Monday expanded its 4G mobile broadband service into Houston, Texas. The company’s Clear WiMAX offering is now available throughout the greater Houston area, Clearwire said. John Smith has been named general manager for the Houston market.

“Clear is thrilled to bring to Houston residents, businesses and visitors an Internet experience similar to what they’re used to having at home or the office, anywhere around town or on the go,” Smith said in a statement.

Much of the coverage will overlap with the 4G network being rolled out with Sprint, which has assumed an ownership stake in Clearwire.

Clear prices typically run $30 per month for home Internet service, and $40 per month for mobile Internet, or $10 for a day pass with a WiMAX-enabled device. For a limited time, users in Houston can get mobile Internet for $15 per month for two months after a $50 service credit and a two-year contract if they sign up online at www.clear.com. Other bundles start at $55 per month.

Here’s an interesting one. Just days after Cisco admitted that it was killing its own internal development of WiMAX kit, the networking mainstay has sunk an undisclosed amount of cheddar into a company that holds WiMAX in the highest regard: Grid Net. Said outfit has close ties to GE, Intel, Motorola and Clearwire, all of which have also voiced support (and invested real dollars) for the next-generation wireless protocol in years past. Last we heard, Cisco was doing its best to remain “radio-agnostic,” and while some may view this as flip-flopping, we view it as brilliant; it’s costly to develop internally, but buying stake in a company that’s already well versed in a given technology allows Cisco to keep WiMAX at arm’s reach without incurring the risk associated with building within. Beyond all that, we think that Cisco’s just trying to get in early on the energy management biz, particularly after the US government announced that it would be funding the distribution of loads of in-home energy monitors in the coming years. According to Grid Net, it intends to “use the proceeds from this investment to promote its real-time, all-IP, secure, reliable, extensible, end-to-end Smart Grid network infrastructure solutions,” though specifics beyond that were few and far between. Verizon mentioned that it would soon be using its LTE network for all sorts of unorthodox things — we suppose WiMAX backers are planning to allow the same.

Cisco sinks funding into WiMAX-supporting Grid Net, looks to ride the ‘smart energy’ wave originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Mar 2010 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You’ll have to wait a few months for the HTC Evo 4G phone, but Sprint is already selling their 4G WiMAX modems for laptops. At the CTIA Wireless trade show today, we saw the next generation of these modems – they may be coming in a smaller form, and a lot of jaunty colors.

Sprint’s current line of modems are manufactured by C-Motech, and over at C-Motech’s booth we saw two new lines of modems with the Sprint logo proudly emblazoned upon them. The first (at top) was a row of Sprint U301 modems coming in seven colors. The U301 modem has a “halo” antenna around its top, and the halo was colored on these models.

In the C-Motech booth we also saw the Sprint U302 (at left), which appears to be Sprint’s next-generation modem. It looks a lot like the U301, but with the halo eliminated; it’s a smaller, slimmer device.

Sprint hasn’t announced the U302 or the colored U301 devices yet, so we’re not sure when they’re coming. But the U302 is pretty clearly coming to Sprint soon. I’m not so sure about the colored modems, though; they may just have been for display. (The C-Motech folks weren’t too clear on that.)