McCaw's Wireless ISP Begins Trial Run This Summer

prostoalex writes "Wireless legend and billionaire Craig McCaw is moving into broadband wireless business with his new company. ClearWire will launch the service this summer in Jacksonville, FL and St Cloud, MN. The offerings will include 512 kbps, 786 kbps and 1.5 Mbps plans. Pricing is not revealed yet, but Business Week cites industry insiders claiming it's going to be in $40-50 range. ClearWire will rely on WiMAX (802.16) technology."

Comments

Great way to meet wireless peers?

[number]

I guess I'm missing a problem here, but for every transmitter this guy has there will be (hopefully) more than one person that will be subscribed to it.

If more than one person can access the transmitter, then those multiple clients could just as easily talk to each other, should they take the time to work out a private wireless network for everyone to work on.

If the company had a forum where users could post their area codes, it would be a great way to meet and then privately organise a self-contained network.

McCaw reads Cringely?

[FirstTimeCaller]

Well if I didn't know better, I'd think that Mr. McCaw got his idea from a Robert X. Cringely column. Or maybe it's just Business Week's choice of calling it a disruptive technology.

Too bad he didn't get all the details right. As far as I can tell, it certainly would be disruptive to my wallet. At 40-50 dollars/month this is obviously not aimed at your average consumer. I do a lot of commuting by ferry and would love to be able to spend some of that time online, but I'm not about to double my monthly ISP expenses to do so.

So this appears to be aimed primarily at business users... but that makes me wonder why the choice of Jacksonville and St Cloud as test cities? Is there some high-tech corridors in these cities that I don't know about?

I'd love wireless access everywhere, but it seems like Cringely has the more feasible solution.