Using WiMAX To Replace a Phone?

vigmeister writes "I've decided to explore the possibility of using a netbook/MID as a phone while eschewing the services of a cellphone provider. Now that Atlanta (where I live) has WiMAX from Clear, I ought to be connected to the Internet everywhere within the city (once I sign up). Theoretically, this should mean that I will be able to use my netbook as a cell phone. Of course, there are some very real issues to overcome and I am simply putting this experiment together to see if it is something that is realistically possible. This could possibly extend to uncapped 3G connections (if they exist any more) as well. Are there any obvious problems you would foresee? Is there anything I have missed or any other questions I should attempt to answer in this 'experiment' of mine? A major issue is, of course, the fact that my pseudo-netbook has to be carried everywhere and always left on."

Comments

Re:Wrong tool for the wrong job.

[svnt]

It depends. I live in Portland, Oregon and tried this with Clear, Skype, and call-forwarding.

For me personally (and I assume at least multiple other people reading this website), I primarily use my cell phone at home and at work. It works reasonably well in this situation assuming you have good coverage at both ends. The battery life is a non-issue because it is primarily plugged in. I don't answer my phone when driving anyway, so most of my friends will leave a voicemail.

The biggest issue is network latency. It is like having a conversation over (forgive me) NAT-blocked Xbox Live. There is a very noticeable lag in the conversation.

When going out, I used my cell phone for texts. You can have Skype transcribe your voicemails and SMS you with their contents. Then you can respond via email/SMS.

All in all it worked decently, although it was fairly involved to set up. I stopped using it in the end because of the lag, the fact that Clear wouldn't support the Nokia n810, and finally I got tired of lugging the netbook around. It was an interesting experiment and you could probably make do with it, but it is not very practical just yet.

Re:You're delusional

[afidel]

Damn, Clearwire IS using ~120Mhz in the 2.5Ghz area of the spectrum. The 700Mhz WiMax deployments are still awaiting the shutdown of the analog tv signals later this year.