Clearwire, Intel and Best Buy Team Up on WiMAX Promotion
Readers of Sidecut Reports heard about it a couple weeks ago, but today the three companies made it official with a press release spelling out the details of the Clearwire/Intel/Best Buy WiMAX promotion. While we’re not sure who’s footing the big part of the bill, for potential customers the deal is basically a $100 discount for a Best Buy-purchased laptop with WiMAX embedded inside, providing you also sign up for a 2-year contract for Clearwire service.
If you’re in the market for a new computer anyway and want to give WiMAX a whirl, it’s a bit of a deal sweetener and the kind of thing that Clearwire had been shying away from during its initial market launches, since it didn’t really have the cash on hand to subsidize the discounts itself. But with more big-city market launches either already in the books or due to go live this year, more businesspeople may be interested in a laptop that can connect to both Wi-Fi and a 4G network like Clearwire’s, at no additional cost. So the timing seems to be right.
At CTIA in Las Vegas this year we got the chance to test one of the Dell netbooks with WiMAX embedded inside, and even in a limited test the connection was fast and strong, obviously taking advantage of the better power and antenna attributes that an embedded modem has over a USB dongle. The Best Buy promo comes on the heels of last week’s announcement of a couple new pocketspots (aka mobile portable WiMAX-to-Wi-Fi routers) for the Clear network, as well as (finally!) a USB modem that supports Macintoshes.
We will have a field report soon on some of the new gear but the bottom line for Clearwire followers is that the oft-promised parade of WiMAX devices now seems to be materializing. At the very least, having more choices is always best for consumers since it brings down prices overall and forces competitors to respond in kind.
