Sidecut Reports

Well, nothing like a silly headline to get your attention, eh? In the latest of our wireless testing series that has already made stops in Silicon Valley and Las Vegas we now turn our attention to the greater Chicagoland area where Clearwire’s WiMAX wireless broadband service has been commercially available for almost a year now.

No fun pictures to accompany this report — we were in Chicago this past weekend for a 30-year high school reunion and all the fun such events entail. But that didn’t stop us from doing a quickie WiMAX vs. Wi-Fi speed test in the northern suburb of Highland Park, where Clearwire has been busy adding towers including one right smack in the middle of downtown. Perhaps that’s why our parking-lot test of Clearwire’s service (even via the Clear Spot 4G+) was as hot as a big, deep-dish Chicago pie right outta the oven:

HIGHLAND PARK DOWNTOWN CLEARWIRE WIMAX CLEAR SPOT 4G+ TEST



And yes since we were parked right outside the front window of the downtown H.P. Starbucks outlet, we could glom onto the coffee shop’s AT&T-provided Wi-Fi signal (which was free, unlike the paid WiMAX service) and here is what we got:

HIGHLAND PARK DOWNTOWN AT&T/STARBUCKS WI-FI TEST



What are our conclusions? That Clearwire has been busy adding towers in the Chicago ‘burbs, something we can tell because we watch the company’s coverage maps from time to time and a lot of the northern suburban area is getting dark-greener on the Clearwire maps courtesy of the additional network rollouts. And if you want to pay for the extra speed and mobility the Clearwire service gives you, it will serve you faster than the Starbucks Wi-Fi. If you are just looking for a free way to connect while sipping that latte, the Starbucks/AT&T link may be all you need.

But… if you find yourself at O’Hare airport near the Starbucks island around Gate C 39, you may (like we were) be unable to find any AT&T service… so then the Clearwire WiMAX can come in pretty handy for those who need speed:

O’HARE AIRPORT GATE C39 CLEARWIRE CLEAR SPOT 4G+ WIMAX TEST

And thanks to the props from our pal Andy Abramson who may soon be able to “officially” run on the Clearwire/Sprint 4G network here in San Francisco which some of us have noticed to be working quite well already. Attention, CTIA attendees!

Here we go again with another completely unscientific, off-the-cuff, single-moment test of Clearwire’s WiMAX wireless broadband service against free Wi-Fi services from AT&T and Starbucks, this time in Las Vegas where Clearwire has been operating WiMAX commercially for more than a year. If you didn’t see our first test of WiMAX vs. Wi-Fi you missed a lot of spirited conversation (most of it over at MuniWireless, where some of our content gets re-posted through an agreement between Sidecut and MW), most of which I thought (and still do) missed the point by trying to convince me that the test wasn’t a fair match of technologies, the results inconclusive, etc., etc.

While I agree that the tests are unscientific — I even said so, like I am doing again here — that doesn’t mean I think they are useless. Instead I look at them as not just isolated events but instead as the seeds of what I hope will be a groundswell of regular folks testing the services they pay for or use for free, to provide as many data points as possible for all of us to make better, more informed broadband purchasing decisions. Sure, it’d be way better to test every Starbucks in existence or every place where you might want to use WiMAX from Clearwire. But I am only one guy with a beat-up old laptop. You gotta start somewhere, and for this post somewhere is just west of the Vegas Strip, at a Starbucks on Flamingo right next to the Palms casino/hotel complex.



That big white building behind the Starbucks is the Palms Place hotel, the new Sidecut Preferred place to stay while in Sin City, for its non-casino lobby, its mini-kitchen suites and close/easy/free parking. And just past the Loose Caboose local casino in the Arville Plaza is this strip-mall Starbucks, where unlike casino-based outlets you can actually get a cup of joe in the morning without waiting in hundreds-long lines. This is a slice of the real world, a fairly normal Starbucks like anywhere else in the USA, with lots of folks camping out on the free Wi-Fi. So how did that AT&T wireless link perform, even though all the tables were crammed with online customers during my entire half-hour visit? Pretty stable, at around 1.35 Mbps on the download.

LAS VEGAS ARVILLE PLAZA AT&T/STARBUCKS WI-FI TEST

In my (completely unscientific!) tests so far it seems like ~1.5 Mbps is about the best or worst you can expect from a Starbucks/AT&T connection, which in my mind is pretty darn good — if you can rely on those speeds everywhere you go, the FREE FREE FREE (did I mention it was FREE?) Starbucks/AT&T service may be all you ever need, along with one tall drip coffee ($1.50 to $1.85) that you can nurse ever so slooooooowly. You might also try one of the old-fashioned donuts. We did. So how did the WiMAX service perform in the same locale?

LAS VEGAS ARVILLE PLAZA CLEARWIRE WIMAX USB TEST



The Clearwire service, which costs $55 for 3G/4G hybrid service (like I get on my USB modem loaned to me by Clearwire) or $40 for just WiMAX, was essentially twice as fast as the “free” Wi-Fi on the download, and a bit slower on the upload. If you drill down for a close-up of this area on the Clearwire coverage maps you see it designated as a lighter green or not “the best” area for coverage, perhaps due to the proximity of the Palms complex (correct me if I’m wrong but it is my general understanding that big, metallic buildings can wreak RF havoc). Either way, WiMAX still “doubles down” on Wi-Fi in this single-epsiode test on one machine at roughly a little past noon. It’s not a big-stick whooping like our first test in Mountain View but still a pretty good real-world result, especially indoors.

What about my other 4G toy, the Clear Spot 4G+ portable modem? This device has a 4G antenna to connect to WiMAX on the back end and then broadcasts a local Wi-Fi signal that you can share between up to 5 devices. I was just using my laptop to make a Wi-Fi connection to the Clear Spot 4G+, which then linked to the Clearwire network. The result:

LAS VEGAS ARVILLE PLAZA CLEARWIRE WIMAX 4G+ CLEAR SPOT TEST



To sum up and perhaps address complaints before they happen, here’s what the test was NOT: It was not an rigorously engineered bakeoff of wireless technologies in a lab; it was not an attempt to say “WiMAX is better than Wi-Fi;” it was not an attempt to find the best wireless value or the best place to connect in Las Vegas in one roll of the online dice. Instead — it’s just a single glimpse at the data we were able to collect, on our own dime and time (along with the free/loaner services provided by Clearwire). The conclusion? Commercial WiMAX seems to be delivering pretty much as advertised, supporting download speeds that can easily double the Wi-Fi signal found inside a Starbucks. Use the results as you wish, but remember since we are a California concern: No wagering.

Now that Clearwire and Sprint have apparently picked up the pace on delivering more places where you can access the partners’ WiMAX wireless broadband service (including Nashville, Tenn., as of Wednesday), we decided to take the connectivity toys Clearwire has lent us and do an ad-hoc comparison of connectivity speeds, pitting Clearwire’s 4G service against the free Wi-Fi offered by Starbucks.

First, some caveats: The WiMAX service in Silicon Valley is part of Clearwire’s innovation network, and not a true commercial service like that now available in 53 markets around the country. But with the company’s announcement this week that services may be rolled out as towers come online, we thought it fair game to see how the down-Peninsula network was holding up. Our testing spot of choice was the Starbucks outlet in Charleston Plaza, a prefab big-box mall with an REI outlet and a pet store. While not scenic the Starbucks nevertheless had a nice selection of outdoor tables, one of which we took over for our Tuesday afternoon speed-comparison extravaganza.

First up for testing was the Clear Spot 4G+ Personal Hotspot, on loan from Clearwire. This device is the Clearwire-branded version of the Overdrive pocketspot that Sierra Wireless first built for Sprint, an incredibly handy device that automagically will connect to the Sprint 3G network if WiMAX isn’t available. Here in Mountain View, we know we’re fairly close to the 4G towers Clearwire put in near Google’s campus which is just the other side of 101. It works by grabbing a WiMAX (or 3G) signal on the back end, and then broadcasting broadband in a personal Wi-Fi “cloud” to as many as five other devices. After a quick stop at a splash screen to register the device we were off and running, zooming past 4 Mbps on the download and getting about 500 Kbps on the upload.

CLEAR SPOT 4G + TEST:

Next we turned off the Clear Spot and searched our available Wi-Fi networks list for the Starbucks Wi-Fi (which was listed as AT&T, and apparently was one of the former Wayport hotspots). After logging in and clicking away from the latte-flavored Starbucks content screen, we tested the Wi-Fi connection and found it adequate (and even better on the uplink), but nowhere close to the Clear Spot link for download speeds:

STARBUCKS/AT&T WI-FI TEST:

While we were searching wireless networks, we saw an unsecured link advertised as Google Wi-Fi — probably a remnant of the Wi-Fi network Google built for its corporate hometown. (Since the Starbucks was next to a Chipolte outlet, maybe Googlers pushed for a nearby connection so they could stay on the net while they grabbed an off-campus burrito.) Whatever the reason, the Google Wi-Fi was a little faster that the Starbucks link, but nowhere near the Clear Spot for download speed:

GOOGLE WI-FI TEST:

Next we turned off the Wi-Fi antenna and inserted a USB modem also lent to us by the folks at Clearwire (an older CMU-300 model built by Franklin Wireless) that can connect to either 3G or 4G services. Sidecut readers may have seen us put this device through some earlier tests when the Silicon Valley network was just getting off the ground. Anyway, the question of what service you want if speed matters was answered pretty quickly. We’ll let the numbers to the talking:

CLEARWIRE USB MODEM TEST:

We also did a test on the Sprint 3G service available from the USB modem, and it tested out at 1.31 Mbps for the download and ~500 Kbps for the upload, comparable to Wi-Fi.

Overall, it’s pretty amazing sometimes when you stop and think of all the broadband choices that may be available to you in any given location. (We are guessing that AT&T and Verizon most likely have 3G data services available in the area, though we are also guessing that their speeds would be the functional equivalent of Sprint’s 3G network.) But it’s also clear even from our completely non-scientific little test that there is a leap of magnitude in going from existing technologies to the 4G wireless services just now hitting the airwaves. As we say, let the testing begin!

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