CLEAR 4G Internet Service?

[Sloehand]

Anyone have any comments, experience with this fully wireless Internet service.  It's available in my city, and claims 6MB upload and download.  I've heard rumors about it, but hadn't really looked into it until now.

All comments and observations will be appreciated, and you will not be held accountable for my monthly ISP bill.  That is, unless you'd like to be.

[titanic3]

Im using verizon fios, which is 4G, I think?

Depending on the website I download from, I can either see 500KB/s or 4000KB/s which is pretty damn fast. About   
5 minute or so for a 1GB file at 4000KB/s. You live in a city you said, so I would expect they have a verizon store around. IMO, best Internet provider. Never had a single disconnect either, for a year now.

[JTs]

I'm in las vegas and my niece has it. its ok for general surfing or downloading. but for playing ah it SUCKS BIG TIME. ping rate was up in the high 600ms and packets were dropped from the house to the first tower.

[hyzer]

I've had it for about a year for both phone and internet.  Phone quality is ok, upload download and ping is fully dependent on the quality of your signal from the cell tower.  My ping times to the arenas are usually about 100ms or so.  Nobody has told me I am warping about, but that is probably because I get shot down so fast.   

[titanic3]

Hmm I don't know bout you guys, but I live in NYC, and when I installed verizon, they dug up my phone line in the ground and added their own fiberoptics line, 5 ft or so under my yard. That's why I don't get disconnects probably. As for ping, in all the games I play, I never get past 150, depending on where the server is. Highest I've seen was 190 but then it dropped after 4 minutes.

[outbreak]

Titanic what you are referring to is a Wired connection through Verizon, Sloehand is referring to the new 4G wireless networks offered by the Cell phone providers. Which I read a little about and while the current 4G networks boast 10-15mb Downloads and 2-3 mb uploads that is because of the lack of users. Like the article said give it 1-2 years and you can see it back down to 3G speeds due to the mass volume of users accessing the network.

Your best bet overall is just to look for a similar priced Wired connection, I was paying $50 month for 1.5mb DSL then i did some shopping and the Cable company had a hell of a better deal, 18mb DL and 1.5mb Upload for $45 a month, Almost went into shock =] Can watch streaming videos from 2 PCs in the house and still play online games with barely hitting 120ms.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Titanic what you are referring to is a Wired connection through Verizon, Sloehand is referring to the new 4G wireless networks offered by the Cell phone providers. Which I read a little about and while the current 4G networks boast 10-15mb Downloads and 2-3 mb uploads that is because of the lack of users. Like the article said give it 1-2 years and you can see it back down to 3G speeds due to the mass volume of users accessing the network.

Your best bet overall is just to look for a similar priced Wired connection, I was paying $50 month for 1.5mb DSL then i did some shopping and the Cable company had a hell of a better deal, 18mb DL and 1.5mb Upload for $45 a month, Almost went into shock =] Can watch streaming videos from 2 PCs in the house and still play online games with barely hitting 120ms.

The problem with cable providers is that the tech is very flakey, the network is chained in a way that one bad node can stall everyone. That's why cable connections tend to be notorious. If it works it can be great. But it's prone to fail, unless they developed something new since I last checked.

[outbreak]

The problem with cable providers is that the tech is very flakey, the network is chained in a way that one bad node can stall everyone. That's why cable connections tend to be notorious. If it works it can be great. But it's prone to fail, unless they developed something new since I last checked.

Live in Cheyenne, WY and we normally get winds in the 40+ range with gusts to 60 or 70 and even with those, a foot of snow and -20 temps I still have only had 2 outages/downtimes in 6 months of service, Not bad if I say so myself =]

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Live in Cheyenne, WY and we normally get winds in the 40+ range with gusts to 60 or 70 and even with those, a foot of snow and -20 temps I still have only had 2 outages/downtimes in 6 months of service, Not bad if I say so myself =]

Considering that cables are typically routed underground I have no doubts about that

I was referring to routing issues, the cable households usually are all chained up so that even one bad piece of hardware can literally disable or stall everyone in the same network. Think of it as 'raid 0' of networking, the more households you have linked up the higher chance of failure you get. Oh and cable users typically also share the bandwith of a single connection so it can get congested with a lot of users.

As said YMMV some are very happy with cable. Some are cursing it. I belong to the latter through my experience

[Ghosth]

With cable it all depends on which "loop" your on and how many users are on that loop.

While they can and do scale up bandwidth as needed, you can still see more lag during primetime when everyone is home and surfing or gaming.

Great speeds, but if its over populated you can have terrible lag and not be able to do anything about it.

[outbreak]

Well guess i got lucky and was stuck on a "Good" loop cause like I said only ever had 2 downtimes and no real issues, Heck the excellent cable Inet actually made me toss my dish and signup for TV to lol, Also dont regret, Lowered the bill $40/month and got more channels lol + Free HD =]

[Ghosth]

Outbreak ISP's vary widely from location to location. And as I mentioned even in the same city your experience can very widely depending one where you are hooked in. Some area's cable is better, others DSL gets the nod.

Cable will normally have better download speed. But AH really doesn't need that much bandwidth. It just needs a stable connection with fairly low ping and no packet loss.